More than 150 Australian super products have received a AAA rating from industry analyst Rainmaker Information. Was yours on the list?
Rainmaker has released its Superannuation Benchmarking Report, an assessment of Australia’s super products according to performance, fees, insurance, operations and extra benefits.
Of the 392 products studied, 158 passed all the benchmarks and were given the coveted AAA rating.
Rainmaker found there were 149 super funds currently operating, and 56 had at least one product with a Rainmaker AAA rating.
Equipsuper and Prime Super had the most high performing products with eight each, followed by Hostplus with six products, while Aware Super, Commonwealth Superannuation Corporation and UniSuper each had five top-rated offerings.
Rainmaker executive director of research and compliance Alex Dunnin says its retirees who ultimately benefit from having a range of high-performing super products.
“With just over a third of products achieving the AAA rating, it’s pleasing to see that Australians have a wide range of superannuation options in a competitive market,” he says.
But he also mentioned that wide range is shrinking somewhat.
“The number of funds with at least one AAA-rated product dropped from 66 to 56 since the 2022 ratings.
“Over that time, we’ve seen several funds merge, with the total pool of funds also dropping from 173 to 149.”
Not-for-profit products have again outperformed retail, with 72 per cent of AAA-rated products from these funds compared to 28 per cent from retail.
Of the not-for-profit products, 79 were from industry funds, 25 from government funds and 10 from corporate funds.
How were funds assessed?
Breaking down Rainmaker’s assessment criteria a little further, the rating system classifies super products based on the following categories:
- Investments – including the investment menu, overall performance and risk-adjusted performance over at least five years as well as investment processes and use of asset consultants and multi-manager processes.
- Insurance – including the types of insurances offered, premium costs and default coverage and variations by age, occupation, gender and industry.
- Fees – including details of administration fees, investment fees, advice fees and indirect costs to the consumer.
- Company and operations – including the structure, trustee board and senior management, fund compliance, operations outsourced, size of the fund, complaints history and resolution, administration and investment flexibility, communications with members and more.
- Extra services – including financial planning and advice services, loyalty programs and any other value adds for members the fund may offer.
Rainmaker Information’s full list of AAA-rated super products can be found here.
Did your super product receive a AAA rating from Rainmaker? Would you consider switching to a higher-rated product? Let us know in the comments section below.
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