In the first paper, the lacklustre investment performance of Australian superannuation was attributed to the Retail sector. This second paper investigates potential explanations for this fact through an empirical attribution analysis of the impact of asset allocation, operational structure and...

This paper provides an overview of the financial performance trends of the Australian superannuation system in the period 1997-2016, based on audited accounting data. Strong contribution flows have allowed total assets to grow at an average annual rate of about ten percent to $2 trillion by June...

The public's positive impression of Australian superannuation comes from the rapid asset growth of the system and selective sampling inherent in focusing on performance of funds and options may over-estimate the performance of the whole system by two percent per annum due to survivorship bias....

The revelations from the Hayne Royal Commission (HRC, 2019), limited though they were by the terms of reference, have come as a shock to most people, including Australian politicians, officials, academics and the media. Their expressed shock indicates a high degree of ignorance about the...

The Australian superannuation system was founded on the assumption that market competition will deliver economic efficiency in a largely private defined contribution system. Since the Wallis Report (1997) explicitly articulated this view, total assets in the system have grown substantially...

Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA) as the national statistical agency for the Australian financial sector, has undertaken an extensive survey in 2006 into Australian superannuation fund governance. This paper provides a summary of the results of the governance survey, which found...

This paper proposes an approach to design a national default option to maximize retirement savings in defined contribution superannuation, using a proportionate shareholding approach which minimizes total cost of investing for all investors.The paper provides a new rationale for passive...

Recent advances in investment performance measurement and cost analysis are applied to suggest ways to improve Australian pension management. Using empirical data collected by the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority in 2006, we show that investment performance of different types of...

Compared with large institutional pension funds, there is relatively little published research on small funds, which are defined in the Australian superannuation legislation as pension funds with less than five members. Small funds account for more than 20% of total pension assets and they are...

Investment performance studies of pension or mutual funds have overall been too statistically inconclusive to create definitive rankings to help investors make fund selection decisions. This paper presents an alternative approach based on comparing the pension or mutual fund firms themselves...