Delivering some 8.9 per cent returns per annum, the Hostplus Balanced option continues to be the top performing growth fund in Australia in the last decade.
This was well over the median of 7.5 per cent, according to Chant West analysis.
Chant West said investment options in its growth fund category are where the majority of Australians have their super invested, those holding 61-80 per cent in growth assets.
The second top performer was $300 billion fund AustralianSuper, which remains the country’s largest super fund with over 3.1 million members. On a 10-year horizon, its Balanced option has seen some 8.6 per cent returns.
One of the country’s newer super funds, Australian Retirement Trust (ART), came in third spot with 8.4 per cent.
Formed in February 2022 through the Sunsuper and QSuper, ART’s Super Savings Balanced option has adopted the pre-merger investment strategy of the Sunsuper Balanced option.
According to Chant West’s analysis, the top five growth performers were rounded up by $115 billion UniSuper Balanced (8.4 per cent) and Cbus Growth (MySuper) (8.3 per cent).
Seven of the top 10 performers in the last decade were larger funds, however some of Australia’s small and medium funds also delivered strong long-term returns, it noted.
This included the $12 billion fund Vision Super in sixth place, which is currently in the next stage of merger talks with Active Super to form a $27 billion fund, which has a 10-year return of 8.1 per cent in its Super Balanced Growth option.
This was followed by CareSuper Balanced and HESTA Balanced Growth, both at 8 per cent.
Towards the end of the leaderboard, $160 billion fund Aware Super held the ninth spot at 7.9 per cent.
In final spot, Spirit Super, which has entered a binding agreement to merge with CareSuper to create a $50 billion combined fund, has seen 7.8 per cent returns in the 10 years to 30 June 2023.
The inclusion of small funds highlighted size need not be an obstacle to performance, especially as APRA encourages smaller funds to merge with larger rivals for scale benefits.
“While we absolutely believe there are benefits of having scale, some small to medium-sized funds have also invested wisely,” said Mano Mohankumar, Chant West senior investment research manager.
” …the Hostplus Balanced option continues to be the top performing growth fund…”
Why shouldn’t we include Growth funds in the Balanced profile? AustralianSuper are doing it all the time!!!
Did Chant West compare the asset allocations for the ‘Balanced’ options of these funds?
My experience is that some of these funds have a heavy skew to growth investments – and place infrastructure and some unlisted assets in the defensive basket – which pushed the fund further up the growth scale.
Chant West should be better than this.
Yes the ‘Compare the pair’ is just not comparable really
This doesn’t mean much when the naming convention of ‘balanced’ is different across the profession. A higher risk interpretation of ‘Balanced’ may win awards but, on the other hand’ meet a persons tolerance for risk.
Easy to do when you make up your own asset allocation definitions.