Trialogue

Our Australian Management Consulting team (formerly Tria Investment Partners) is responsible for the highly successful Trialogue – a must-read for those within the Australian wealth and management industry. These fortnightly, thought provoking articles are produced by our experienced consulting team in Sydney, Australia.

Subscribe to Trialogue and stay current with our latest insights.

Trialogue – DDO delivers manufacturers an (unexpected) data opportunity

  Regulators are baring their newly-sharpened teeth empowered not only by the Royal Commission findings but also new legislation. Earlier this year, two additional regulatory reforms were introduced that promise to invite ASIC even more deeply inside the operations of product manufacturers, issuers and distributors: Product Intervention Powers, which allow ASIC to step in and […]

Read more…

The forgotten advice distribution opportunity

  There is no doubt that there are significant shifts occurring in the advice industry: FASEA will see many advisers leave the industry (though mostly the non-productive ones), the shift in licensing model to ‘independent’ continues unabated and the overlap between accounting and financial advice continues to grow. Amongst all this change, many asset managers […]

Read more…

The impending advice gap is dramatically overstated

  There have been many ‘Chicken Little-esque’ predictions that the sky is falling in, that FASEA and the fall-out from the Royal Commission will decimate the number of advisers in the industry, creating a large advice gap and preventing many investors who could benefit from advice from being served. While there is no doubt that […]

Read more…

AustralianSuper builds $70m war chest

AustralianSuper builds $70m war chest The last few years have seen AustralianSuper dominate the pensions landscape in Australia, topping the charts in terms of net flows year after year. The fund has never been afraid of making some big decisions (think of the internalisation of investment that has occurred over the last few years) and […]

Read more…

Royal Commission quietly decimates advice industry

With quiet fury, Commissioner Hayne handed down his report. His commentary was scathing. The participants in Australia’s financial system (including its regulators) have been taken to task for greed and ineptitude. The recommendations are extensive, 76 in all; but on reading the 10 relating to financial advice and another 9 focussing on superannuation, you could […]

Read more…

When is vertical integration OK?

Our industry has grown up relying on vertical integration- a model coming under increasing pressure. The banks are divesting from their wealth businesses, and there are strong views being expressed that the model is no longer fit for purpose, that it should be unwound. Notwithstanding the public flaying of the Royal Commission, such a binary […]

Read more…

Platform fees: the new frontier

The way platforms charge clients has been undergoing steady (if not disruptive) change as the large providers have established scale positions and the battle to be an adviser’s ‘lead platform’ has escalated. Most wrap platforms have now incorporated fee caps (setting the administration fee at zero beyond a particular FUM level) and family/account aggregation (combining […]

Read more…

Robo-advice: what happens when you peak too early?

About a year ago we published a series of Trialogues titled ‘lots of robo, not much advice’. Back then, despite the hype most robo providers were landing at ‘investment selection advice’ and going no further. It seemed only a few had made the foray into self-directed, strategic personal advice, and even then, none of these […]

Read more…

Advisers are happier than ever with platforms

Platforms continue to play a critical role in advisers’ businesses, providing a means to efficiently administer, report on and monitor their clients’ portfolios. However, they can often be taken for granted and undervalued by advisers, sometimes bearing the brunt of criticism partially as the complexity of providing these services is misunderstood. Nevertheless, the latest NMG […]

Read more…

Does salaried advice need a new (tied) regulatory model?

Here’s the latest Trialogue – in the traditional format as ever, and there is also a video if that’s how you prefer to consume the content.   In the aftermath of the Royal Commission, best interest duty has been a topic of much discussion.  It’s a really important part of the regulatory construct and instrumental […]

Read more…

The firm vs the client: conflicted decision making post-Royal Commission

The Financial Services Royal Commission has created a stir across the country; it’s not often that I overhear conversations about AMP at my local pub, or that my Mum sends me a text asking if her superannuation is ‘safe’. Within the wealth industry there has also been widespread shock.  Some of the things that have […]

Read more…

LICs: the end of the gravy train?

Like other listed structures, listed investment companies have experienced significant growth in recent years, with 16 IPOs in 2017 for a total new issuance of almost $4.5 bn (compared to 11 IPOs of just over $1bn in 2016), including the massive $1.5bn Magellan Global Trust. However, Magellan has done more than just raise a significant […]

Read more…

Retail super funds missing their golden opportunity

Retail superannuation should be having its time in the sun. Retail funds are targeted at the wealthier end of town (a segment that has been growing rapidly as the system matures), particularly those nearing or entering retiremen‌t (clearly the baby boomers are driving growth in this segment). The complex regulatory environment notwithstanding, the superannuation market […]

Read more…

Listed structures for asset managers: golden opportunity or fool’s gold?

The business of retail asset management was – in hindsight – a simple affair even up until the first part of this century. Clients sought advice, planners sold managed funds on platform‌s, asset managers charged fees and funded much of the value chain. The retail landscape has become much more complex. ETFs, ETMFs, LICs, IMAs, […]

Read more…

Global domination: only brave managers need apply

Asset management has all the conditions necessary to support strong global players. The features supportive of global business models (consistency in product definitions, cross-border demand for investment exposures, low barriers to entry) are all present, but when we segmented asset managers by their brand coverage, it’s clear that the supply-side is dominated by managers with […]

Read more…

Lots of robo, not much advice … part 3 – ‘incremental advice’ paving the way for personal advice in industry funds

Since our last instalment, where we discussed the industry developments targeting the ‘sweet spot’ of self-guided, simple holistic digital advice, Tria formally adopted our parent’s brand, NMG Consulting. Now moving from a brand we’d like to think was known for its expertise in the Australian wealth management industry, to one just as mature and respected […]

Read more…

Lots of robo, not much advice … part II

In our last installment, we discussed the current state of the digital advice landscape – an underwhelming plethora of discretionary investment and retirement income calculators that do little to solve for Australia’s advice gap. While investment in advice technology proceeds at pace, there is growing acceptance that there may never be a binary choice between […]

Read more…

Lots of robo, not much advice … part I

Ever since fintechs and asset managers led the charge in launching robo-advice offerings in Australia; expectations have been building that we’d soon see the democratisation of personal advice through digital channels. Advice of the type afforded by only wealthy Australians might soon be made accessible to anyone through a proposition whose only discriminating factor is […]

Read more…

Do clients really care about fees?

Much like their overseas counterparts, regulator in Australia put considerable time and effort (and regulatory muscle) into ensuring that the industry does what’s best for the consumer. And it’s fair to say there has been a heavy – almost myopic – focus on fees and costs. But the question remains… is the regulator actually helping […]

Read more…

The World’s Leading Life Protection Markets

In Brief: Having fielded questions from clients and stakeholders for several years, we’ve eventually got around to producing a global index of total risk in-force for the world’s largest life insurance markets. This analysis differs from all others, in that it is focused exclusively on the risk component of life products, meaning mortality, disability and […]

Read more…

Advice: What’s it worth to a super fund?

Financial advice has been causing headaches across the industry over the last few years, from disparaging newspaper headlines to ASIC interventions and threat of disruption, there has been no let-up in pressure to fix the problems of the past and innovate for the future. Advice presents a conundrum for all workplace superannuation providers, industry fund […]

Read more…

Spaceship Part II: Will it take off?

In Part I we looked at what we might learn from Spaceship so far, particularly how it engaged and recruited hitherto disengaged astronauts. Spaceship has engaged a target market, young professionals, that has traditionally presented super funds with some challenges, so this week we look at Spaceship’s prospects: will it take off? Let’s define young […]

Read more…

Spaceship Part I: a lesson in engagement

The holy grail of superannuation: an engaged member base. This is difficult enough to achieve if you have thousands of advisers on your books and a set of members nearing retirement. But engaging with younger people – say anyone 25+ – is a puzzle few in this industry would say they have solved so far. […]

Read more…

Beyond the boomers: targeting the next growth segment

The retail industry has traditionally been squarely focused on clients who are aged 45 and over.  That has made perfect sense thus far, but there are a couple of reasons we think that will change in the not-too-distant future, presenting a challenge to industry funds who have – for the most part – had the […]

Read more…

Retirement – industry funds’ weak spot. Or is it?

For all the growth, regulatory reform and hype about disruption, over the past 10 years (at the segment level) there has only been one meaningful shift: today’s infographic shows that retail funds have yielded market share to industry funds, whilst all other segments are basically flat.  Even SMSFs, one of the most talked about growth […]

Read more…

CIPR: A strategic leg-up for industry funds

Industry funds have been stealing the march on retail funds for some years now – our Tria Super Funds Review will reveal that large industry funds have stolen a full 4% market share from the rest of the system, whilst retail funds’ share has gone backwards by 1.7%. But the prospects for retail funds – […]

Read more…

Managed Accounts – is the jigsaw now complete?

Managed accounts have been ‘the next big thing’ in the platform and asset management industry for at least a decade now, promising to revolutionise the way advisers invest in a more tax friendly, transparent and cost effective manner. Australian Adviser Insights Programme, taking in the views of more than 200 independent advisers confirms the accepted […]

Read more…

Invest in your brand: Ignore what they say, watch what they do

It will be no surprise to anyone that when we asked almost 500 institutional asset management buyers globally about how important an asset manager’s brand is in their decision making process, the overwhelming response is that it isn’t important at all. In fact, the institutions we spoke to as part of the annual NMG Global […]

Read more…

GoogleSuper? We don’t think so.

With all the doomsday predictions of digital disruption you could be forgiven for thinking the industry is on the verge of catatonic capitulation. The industry’s customers are apparently chomping at the bit to change super funds, invest online and save some acorns in spaceships! But, coming back to earth, it’s important to understand a critical […]

Read more…

The great passive road trip; when will it end?

The near decade long rise of passive management in Australia, largely at the expense of active managers, has been well documented. The question we’ve been asking as we compile the Tria Managed Funds Review each quarter is how far will this trend run? The chart below illustrates the last 3 years (and one quarter) of […]

Read more…

SMAs the key to keeping SMSFs on platform

For many years, proponents of Separately Managed Accounts (SMAs) have exclaimed their virtues for servicing the investment needs of advised self-managed superannuation funds (SMSFs).  SMAs provide financial advisers the ability to generate administrative efficiency in managing multiple client portfolios in return for trading off some of the tailoring afforded by bespoke direct share portfolios, without […]

Read more…

The cost consequences of a regulatory merry-go-round

Regulatory change has been and always will be part of financial services – over the years around the world regulatory reforms have helped the industry improve how we serve our customers. However, the sheer amount of regulatory change over the last five years is unprecedented, and the benefit of some changes is yet to be […]

Read more…

Getting segmentation right: knowing who is going to vote 1 for you

If winning elections is predicated on having the strongest understanding of your constituents’ hearts and minds, then so too is a successful distribution strategy when it comes to your intermediaries and clients.  As the 2nd July federal election post-mortem continues to dominate news cycles, what is clear is that this is precisely where things have […]

Read more…

SMSFs running out of puff!

Once seen as perhaps the primary strategic problem facing superannuation funds, there is suddenly much less noise around SMSFs these days – news articles available to search on Google are down by 55% in just a year, and calls into the Tria/NMG office asking how to respond to the threat have all but dried up. […]

Read more…

The Asia Region Funds Passport: solving the wrong problem

The nirvana of an Asian funds passport – that would allow Australian fund managers unfettered access to Asia’s growing middle classes and already substantial private banking client set – has been enticingly close to our grasp for some time.  It has been a meaningful policy objective of various firms and their industry representatives and the […]

Read more…

Super-focussed budget creates product opportunities outside of super

We have become accustomed to seeing all meaningful budget initiatives plastered across the front page of the press in the week leading up to budget night.  But this year the government kept a few superannuation ‘enhancements’ up its sleeve, and the impacts will be felt across the industry. We focus here on just one of […]

Read more…

A maturing superannuation industry, part I: declining organic growth

Last week’s release of the 2015-16 Tria Super Funds Review showed that a meaningful proportion of large superannuation funds are in net outflow.  APRA agreed, making public comments last week to the effect that 45% of the superannuation funds it regulates are not generating enough in contributions to offset benefits paid to members and balances […]

Read more…

Fixed income funds enjoying a renaissance

Fixed income products have long been considered the poor cousin of equity, property and even multi-sector products.  They offer lower margins, limited potential for high returns and the market has a generally low level of understanding of how fixed income works. However, fixed income funds are enjoying a renaissance of sorts. Today’s first chart shows […]

Read more…

Taking another look at distribution strategies for fund managers

During the lower netflow environment post-2008, many fund managers restructured retail distribution teams to shift the focus away from servicing individual advisers and towards ‘head office’ relationships. The idea was that the centre of power had shifted from advisers constructing portfolios themselves to head office researchers who build model portfolios.  It was logical, then, that […]

Read more…

The power of thought leadership in asset management

Our colleagues at NMG Consulting have been hard at work delivering our first global asset management study, conducting over 1,600 interviews in 14 countries, obtaining detailed insights and views from key institutional investors, gatekeepers, and financial advisors. The study has produced a swathe of insights, some of which are covered in our Insights Report from […]

Read more…

All I want for Christmas is a direct customer

Our industry has a long track record of building products for unadvised customers – ‘direct to consumer’ propositions.  We are inundated with claims of the rising power of consumers, inciting a fear that we are on the cusp of losing our customers to those cheeky disruptors with cool websites and slick videos. Reasonable concerns couched […]

Read more…

mFunds – has the ship sailed?

It’s been a bit over 18 months since the launch of mFunds, the new ASX managed fund settlement capability. At time of launch there were great expectations mFunds could disrupt the platform market and help investment managers target elusive self-managed super funds (SMSFs).  So far the take-up has been well short of success. ASX data to […]

Read more…

Platforms: high street or haute couture?

This week’s Trialogue draws on the inaugural Tria Australian Wealth Insights Programme. The Programme is an annual study based on face-to-face interviews with more than 200 influential advisers and licensees and provides valuable insights into the advice process, asset allocations, business models and views and preferences relating to lead platforms. One specific area of interest […]

Read more…

Is $1m in super too much?

As part of its recent rubber-stamping of the FSI recommendations, the Government has announced its intention to enshrine in legislation the objective of the superannuation system. This will provide absolute clarity to funds as to their explicit purpose, which is likely to be to provide retirement incomes to substitute or supplement the Age Pension. So […]

Read more…

Are slowing flows signalling passive woes?

This week’s Trialogue is all about charts.  It’s because we found a curious thing happening in the data when we started to compare passive and active FUM and flow data. The story started with this chart… Passive v active FUM (March 2011 – March 2015, $b)     Source: Tria Managed Funds Review There are […]

Read more…

Advice: retail super funds’ home ground advantage

One of the less contentious points raised in our breakfast strategy session earlier in the month was that retiring is complex. It’s difficult to retire effectively in Australia without financial advice. So in a market that is maturing rapidly as the baby boomers retire, a natural conclusion might be that those funds with the biggest […]

Read more…

Advice: a robo future?

Advice in Australia is expensive to provide.  So expensive, that people who need advice can’t afford it.  We have an advice gap and it’s only going to get worse as the baby boomers head into retirement.  But it’s not an insurmountable problem. In our recent client strategy breakfast sessions, held in Melbourne and Sydney, we […]

Read more…

Managed accounts – are we there yet?

Managed accounts are complex – the term can refer to SMAs, IMAs, MDAs and managed portfolios.  We have seen SMAs of stocks, SMAs of ETFs and even SMAs of other SMAs.  No wonder, then, that we are often asked to explain managed accounts to clients – something we hope to do in this week’s Trialogue. […]

Read more…

Retirement incomes III: deconstructed annuities

In this series of Trialogues on retirement incomes we have run through a range of product propositions available to providers; first came account-based pensions (where all the money is), followed by guaranteed income solutions (variable annuities).  In this, the third and final instalment, we look at non-guaranteed options which we’ve called ‘deconstructed annuities’ for reasons […]

Read more…

Retirement incomes II – guaranteed lifetime income

A steady stream of international visitors passes through our office each year on a fact-finding mission to identify potential opportunities in Australia – one of the world’s largest pension markets.  Almost without exception those visitors express surprise that despite leading the world in solving the problem of retirement adequacy, Australia lags so far behind other developed […]

Read more…

Retirement Incomes – Part I

It is well understood that the superannuation system, ostensibly created to generate incomes in retirement, has really been developed with a focus on accumulating balances rather than income streams.  A necessary reorientation is now underway across the industry but the optimal retirement income solution is not yet evident.  Over the next three weeks we will […]

Read more…

Falling member numbers mean not-for-profit funds face pressure to raise fees

After a delay of almost three months, APRA recently released its fund-level superannuation statistics (which means subscribers our Tria Super Funds Review will have recently received a supplementary update). While assets were up strongly during 2014, there was less good news for growth in member numbers. Total member numbers in the Tria large funds universe […]

Read more…

Are we failing in product development?

Last week we emphasised the value of a strong product function and outlined a number of markers to identify high quality, successful product teams. The primary focus of most product teams is in product management – a critically important function. Products require constant tinkering in order to keep up with regulatory and tax changes and […]

Read more…

What is “best practice” when it comes to product?

We are seeing more and more interest from clients in how best to resource and run product teams – one of our recent Trialogue editions ‘How long does Product development take’ was one of our most popular pieces yet. Clearly our readers, like the Tria team, are true believers in the importance of Product to […]

Read more…

Is wealth moving to the freemium model?

Price is just one of marketing’s four Ps, but a critical one for obvious reasons. Among other things, price determines how much can be paid for distribution, it affects perceptions of quality and – clearly – has a big impact on profitability. So what happens when a competitor starts offering a product very similar to […]

Read more…

The BT Equity Income Series – Can complexity sell?

Source: Tria Investment Partners Managed Funds Review December 2014, Morningstar In 2012 BTIM launched its direct to market Equity Income Series, two funds targeting the pre- and post-retirement sectors. The funds were launched with a flourish of targeted marketing materials and communications designed to communicate the benefits to investors. Going against the post-GFC trend towards […]

Read more…

Is Trowbridge fixing a problem that doesn’t exist?

As the life insurance industry counts down toward the deadline for resolving adviser remuneration for life insurance, like many in the industry we are asking ourselves – how did it come to this? We see two primary issues the insurance industry needs to resolve: The quality of advice provided to clients and the resulting quality […]

Read more…

Internalisation: the end of the world as we know it?

Many of Australia’s largest super funds have been progressively increasing headcount in their internal investment teams. Some have very rapidly built out their teams – although this is more the exception than the rule – and AustralianSuper is the first with an internal investment team of more than 100 staff. Asset managers are wondering: how […]

Read more…

If you build it, will they come? What can Australia learn from the UK’s D2C wrap platform market?

The Australian and UK wealth markets have a lot in common… Retail platform markets which are both roughly A$600b in size Both now have compulsory defined contribution employer funded pension/superannuation saving systems1 Both have large and mature financial advice industries (albeit UK licensees are far more independently owned; this point becomes important further down) Both […]

Read more…

It’s not easy being small

It’s not easy being small Friday saw the release of our 2014-15 Tria Super Funds Review with hard copies hitting desks this week. One of the themes highlighted is that despite the superannuation industry being very fragmented (the largest market share sits at just 5%), there is a distinct group of very large funds with […]

Read more…

Avoiding the potholes on the road to MyPension

Retirement income was widely considered as the unfinished business of the Cooper Review. Last year’s Financial System Inquiry called for each super fund to implement a Comprehensive Income Product for Retirement (CIPR) that would provide income, longevity risk management, and flexibility, and argues that trustees are well placed to do so. But are most super […]

Read more…

Looking at Magellan’s MGE structure

Magellan Financial Group has been an unquestionable Australian success in global equities asset management in recent years, the most significant since Kerr Nielsen’s Platinum Asset Management. Magellan has been proactive in addressing the major Australian retail channels and segments. Its LIC (ASX: MFF), and $8bn of unlisted funds, have been followed in in early March […]

Read more…

Super switching – how much money changes hands each year?

When choice of super fund was introduced around a decade ago, there were predictions of mass switching by members, with negative consequences for default super funds. So what has been the experience? How much super AUM changes hand each year as members (and employers) change funds? For most super members, their super fund is chosen […]

Read more…

Super market share – is the rise and rise of SMSFs over?

For the past decade, the market share story in super has been predictable, year in year out – SMSFs up, industry funds up, retail funds down, corporate funds down, public funds down slightly. For the first 8 years of that decade (2004-12), market shares (of super system net assets) moved as follows: Segment 2004 market […]

Read more…

Flat insurance commissions: will it improve customer outcomes?

  February 24, 2015 In the wake of FoFA, there is increasing acceptance that there will also be reform of retail life insurance commissions. There is coalescence around a move to flat commissions, despite the lack of common ground between stakeholders. Insurance advisers lack a coherent narrative, while insurers’ views are polarised based on their […]

Read more…

How long does product development take?

  11 February, 2015 Ask this question around the wealth and asset management industry, and you’ll find common answers include “forever” and “too bloody long”. Product development usually takes longer than most people expect. But it’s typically not a case of “how long is a piece of string”.  There are solid benchmarks for different types […]

Read more…

ETFs go vertical

February 4, 2015 While much of the wealth management industry was absorbed by the Financial System Inquiry and other regulation in 2014, ETFs quietly went vertical. You don’t often get to see a classic product “S” curve unfold outside of the technology industry, so watch this one.  An S curve refers to the shape of […]

Read more…

Good news for super funds – member contributions are way up

20 January, 2015 One of the key characteristics of Australia’s super system has been the steady decline of net inflows over time, with growth in outflows outstripping growth in inflows – equally true of APRA funds and SMSFs. In the second half of 2014, we had been hearing anecdotal evidence from APRA funds clients that […]

Read more…

SMSFs – new cost data reveals an expensive status symbol

For the past couple of years we’ve been having an ongoing discussion with one of our clients about SMSF cost data released by the ATO and relied on by much of the industry in the debate about costs. Our client’s view was that average costs of SMSFs released by the ATO were significantly understated. Because […]

Read more…

FSI – active managers need to find their voice

15 December, 2014 David Murray is probably not top of the Christmas card list for active managers this year. After all, they just got a chunk of the blame for the FSI’s conclusion that the Australian super system is not realizing the full benefits of scale: “costly asset management and active investment strategies” is the […]

Read more…

FSI Final Report – future of default super

The Financial System Inquiry final report is in, and we will discuss its super-related sections over the rest of December.  In proposing some radical but narrow changes, it’s an uneven and underwhelming effort likely to be superceded in importance by the tax white paper. For a report aiming to improve the efficiency of the overall […]

Read more…

Super in 2025 – a big industry, but also a brutal one

  What will the super industry look like in 2025? For those who didn’t make it there, this was the subject of our presentation at the 2014 ASFA Conference. Unless compulsory SG is abolished, the growth of super is assured.  It will be huge by 2025 – around $5 trillion in assets, depending on how […]

Read more…

Retail lapse rates: what are we missing?

The life insurance industry is already battling rising lapse rates and claims, declining sales growth and sub-hurdle returns on capital. The release of ASIC’s review of retail life advice, and particularly the surveillance findings, will lead to further soul-searching – even if the surveillance was not random but targeted AFSLs and practices with the highest […]

Read more…

Active managers are doing better than you think

The active/passive debate has been raging for years, fuelled most recently by research from the Grattan Institute (and subsequently seized upon by the Financial Systems Inquiry) focussing on reducing the cost of super as we discussed in an earlier Trialogue. Our house view on the issue will come as no surprise to most of you: […]

Read more…

Retail managed fund flows: signs of recovery?

We’re in the midst of preparing the latest edition of the Tria Retail Managed Funds Review – a quarterly subscription report that provides regular insights into the Australian retail funds landscape¹ – so we thought this week’s Trialogue would be a nice opportunity to share some high-level observations from our June 2014 release. The last […]

Read more…

LICs: making a comeback – but tread carefully

Listed Investment Companies – or LICs – have been making something of a comeback lately with the net number of new LICs on the ASX at levels not seen since 2005, as today’s chart shows. It hit fever pitch when Investors Mutual raised $185m into the newly minted QV Equities – well above their minimum […]

Read more…

Hunting for growth in a mature market

Why does growth matter?  This is a question we field more often than you might expect. It’s a question which will be confronted more often in a super industry where growth generated from members and net cashflows is now only marginally positive in many cases. “Why does growth matter” is an easier question for the […]

Read more…

When will the super system reach maturity?

  When will Australia’s super system reach maturity? This is an important question for management teams across the industry, whether working for a super fund, an asset manager, or a service provider. What does maturity mean anyway?  In a typical industry, it refers to the top of the industry “S” curve, where revenue growth has slowed […]

Read more…

SMSFs’ compelling value proposition

Wealth industry executives sometimes struggle to understand the steady stream of their members to SMSFs. In a recent ASFA debate of the Pros & Cons of SMSFs (click here for an edited version of the slides), we worked through the case for SMSFs, concluding that the SMSF value proposition can be irresistible, particularly to high […]

Read more…

Lowering super’s cost structure – what are the trade-offs?

What are the trade-offs involved with reducing the cost structure of super? One of the problems with the Grattan Institute view is that it essentially argues that a free lunch is available – ie you can slash costs in super, such as removing active asset management, without any negative consequences. Not only is this highly […]

Read more…

FSI Interim Report – super gearing gets the thumbs down

If the Financial System Inquiry (FSI) interim report raises some difficult questions for collective super funds, it also does the same for the SMSF segment, particularly in respect of gearing. The FSI interim raises the idea of restoring the general prohibition of gearing within super, other than for liquidity purposes. It notes the SMSF gearing […]

Read more…

FSI Interim Report – cut super costs, cut active managers

Financial System Inquiry – how do you cut the costs of super? The interim report of the Financial System Inquiry runs to 460 pages, with 30 pages devoted to the efficiency of the super system. We’ll look at some of the main issues over the coming weeks. The key observation is that there is limited […]

Read more…

Yes, a super fund does need a business strategy

There’s a general sense that APRA is making life harder for super funds of all stripes, as part of an effort to drive up management and board standards, and encourage industry consolidation. We’ve written previously about SPS530, which raised prudential standards for investment governance.  Its requirements for an overall investment governance framework, and an investment strategy, […]

Read more…

Unisuper’s Westfield battle a sign of things to come

The recent dispute between Unisuper, other investors, and Westfield over the restructuring of Westfield Retail Trust (WRT) as “Scentre” provides a great case study of the changing investment priorities of Australia’s super funds. Notwithstanding that the proposal ultimately succeeded, it failed on the first attempt to get 75% approval due to the opposition of a group […]

Read more…

Award default super: where to now?

For a process with so much at stake, the Fair Work Commission (FWC) review of super defaults for the 120 or so modern industrial awards (a cornerstone of Australia’s workplace relations system) has turned into quite the shambles. Award defaults determine the flow of a significant minority of compulsory super contributions.  It’s not the only […]

Read more…

Gearing and the missing SMSF taxes

Having established that the SMSF segment has not paid a decent amount of net taxes since 2009, we’ve drilled a bit down further into the SMSF tax return data. The key drivers of the missing SMSF taxes are (a) around half the assets in the segment are in the (for now) tax exempt pension phase; and (b) […]

Read more…

UK review highlights potential savings from fund mergers

A just released UK report into public sector pension fund costs also highlights the potential for Australian super funds to achieve cost savings for members via mergers. The report, which can be found here, was prepared in respect of the UK Local Government Pension Schemes – 89 separate but sub-scale local government funds – to identify […]

Read more…

What’s worth $500bn and is paying no tax? Yes, SMSFs.

Last week we looked at the small contribution superannuation is making to Commonwealth tax revenues, making it a target for future measures, albeit perhaps not in the coming Budget. Data just out from the ATO adds a lot more colour to that picture, with detailed statistics released relating to individuals, companies, trusts, and of course […]

Read more…

Days of tax exempt pension divisions are coming to an end

In the wake of the Commission of Audit and leading up to the 2014-15 Federal Budget, much focus has been on the affordability of Australia’s public pension arrangements – despite the growth of Australia’s super system to $1.6tn, 80%+ of the population is expected to retain access to the public pension, even over the long […]

Read more…

Fair Work super dispute – who wins in the long run?

Bismarck is reputed to have said (inaccurately it is now believed) that the law is like making sausages – you never want to see them made.  To that we might addthe setting of approved product lists (APLs) – a bitterly contested process where much is at stake. This is the easiest way to understand the contention […]

Read more…

UK abandons annuities – where now for retirement income?

Imagine if in the May Federal Budget the Treasurer announced that super was no longer compulsory. The UK has just seen something comparable with the overnight abandonment of compulsory annuitisation at retirement.  With Australian super funds getting to grips with retirement income, valuable lessons can be learnt. Unlike in Australia where retirees are free to take […]

Read more…

Your next CEO should be a product manager

Not a lot of product managers make it to the top of the wealth and asset management industry.  More often CEOs are taken from the ranks of investment professionals or heads of distribution.  But product managers should keep their eyes on the big prize, because the role of product manager is ideal training for leadership and […]

Read more…

Why we should be paying fund trustees $200,000 pa

A series of ASFA panels in which we are currently participating have discussed where key Coalition policies are likely to land, including the contentious topic of fund governance, the equal representation board model, and independent directors. Changing the status quo has major implications for power and control.  Some stakeholders no doubt see independents as a […]

Read more…

When premiums rise 50%, are you vulnerable on insurance?

During 2014, and in likely for some years to come, super fund members will be getting letters advising them that their insurance costs are rising – substantially. We looked at the de-stabilisation of group life before Christmas, which you can find here.  Now letters from some of the big not-for-profits are starting to go out.  So […]

Read more…

Fund mergers – why HIP and Prime make strange bedfellows

When it comes to fund mergers, it is said that industries can’t or won’t mix, pointing to the apparent cultural difficulties of a hypothetical merger of, say, CBUS and HESTA. But apparently jackaroos and healthcare workers do mix, if the recently announced merger of Prime Super and Health Industry Plan is anything to go by.  […]

Read more…

Super’s new normal – low single digit growth

New normal is a much overused term, but peculiarly applicable to the post-financial crisis world for super. Australia has been used to a super industry of double-digit growth rates, with investment returns pepping things up further.  Indeed, 2013 was like the good old days, with the system growing by 16% – the best annual growth since at […]

Read more…

Making sense of SMSF borrowing

If there is a single statistic that has provoked debate from the ATO annual SMSF statistical release in December, it is probably SMSF borrowings, and any link with increased residential real estate activity and prices. When you have identities such as Paul Howes (National Secretary of the AWU and a Trustee Director of AustralianSuper) writing […]

Read more…

Why SMSFs make no sense – still – below 500K

Santa comes but once a year.  So too does accurate SMSF data – in the form of the ATO annual statistics released just before Christmas. SMSFs are a large and fragmented segment, with the only comprehensive, albeit still limited, data coming from SMSF tax returns.  These take a long time to be filed, processed and […]

Read more…

Vertical integration back on the 2014 radar

Australia’s wealth industry has become a vertically integrated place.   The dominant for-profit business model since the 1990s – advice, platform, and asset management under one roof – has been further reinforced by much of the previous government’s regulatory program, intended or not.Is this the apex of vertical integration or could it go further?  It always […]

Read more…

All I want for Christmas is sustainable group life

                          Earlier this year we looked at how group life had become a hot topic, thanks to large premium increases being communicated to members (First State Super has just issued a Significant Event Notice in one of the latest examples) and the prospect […]

Read more…

Super prices: retail starts to undercut the not-for-profits

Not-for-profit super funds = cheap, retail super funds = expensive. That’s the traditional perception, and indeed the chosen positioning of the industry funds segment, with the “Compare the pair” campaign being the best known example. But the facts were never as simple as the marketing, and it’s a lot less simple now, as today’s chart […]

Read more…

Fail grade: Stronger Super is pushing costs up, not down

Here’s a proposition. Does this sound an attractive project for super funds and their members? – Have management teams spend two years on compliance projects instead of addressing member needs – Spend ~$1 billion – Watch another 100,000 members leave for SMSFs – At the end of it all, deliver pretty much what you were […]

Read more…

Accessing the Significant Investor Visa segment

What price Australian residency? Well now we know. The Significant Investor Visa (SIV) was introduced 12 months ago to provide overseas investors with residency if they invest $5m in “eligible assets”. These types of programs are not uncommon around the world, but are usually targeted at entrepreneurs where investment will lead to job creation. Of […]

Read more…

Do industry funds really outperform?

With the change of government, industry funds face the prospect of a more challenging external environment. It is Coalition policy to sever the connection between industrial awards and super, with the potential for any MySuper product to become eligible to receive mandated contributions, thus breaking the semi-monopolies that many industry funds enjoy. While a serious […]

Read more…

Understanding sovereign wealth funds

Exactly what is a sovereign wealth fund (SWF)? What are the main types of SWFs and what do they invest in to meet their objectives? Sovereign wealth funds are an important but opaque institutional segment, so answering these questions is often difficult and always time consuming. Happily there’s a quality new source covering a sample […]

Read more…

Learning from Fujifilm’s road to safety

Last October we looked at what the wealth industry could learn from the Kodak experience in responding to a disrupted industry. You can see it here. Some of the most interesting lessons relate to why incumbents so often fail in the face of disruptive change – because they benefit from the status quo, threats appears […]

Read more…

Regulators crash the SMSF party

It’s the midnight hour and the party’s in full swing; drinks are flowing and music is blaring. But a loud knock on the door suggests trouble. Sure enough, through the window flashing blue lights illuminate the darkness. Someone has called the cops. Similarly, after years of inactivity, regulators are now paying attention to the rising […]

Read more…

Doing business with SMSFs

This week’s Trialogue summarises some of the key themes from the recent Tria Strategy Series breakfasts – doing business with SMSFs. Tria has not always been wildly enthusiastic about some developments in the SMSF segment. Investors – at least enough to matter – are indeed becoming more engaged with their super. SMSFs are a good […]

Read more…

Super under the Coalition – what to expect

We have a new Government and, soon, a new minister. What should the industry expect from Matthias Cormann – assuming he is appointed as the responsible minister – and the Coalition government? This is no theoretical question. The industry has been head down implementing the ALP’s reform agenda for the past several years, at the […]

Read more…

Surprise! Are managed funds back?

The financial crisis was not fun for Australian fund managers. They did it much tougher than their American and European counterparts, which did not have to compete with 6% term deposit rates. Everyone faced volatile equity markets, but with near zero interest rates, overseas investors had little choice but to seek out returns from growth […]

Read more…

ATO’s SMSF pension scare

One of the popular benefits of SMSFs has been their potential to defer capital gains tax forever. By accumulating assets in the accumulation phase, and not realising capital gains until the pension phase when the income tax rate is zero, no CGT ever becomes payable. This is an important practical advantage of SMSFs over collective […]

Read more…

Group insurance – prices soar as risks come home to roost

To many in wealth management, group insurance is about as exciting as watching paint dry. But strange things are afoot in the group insurance world which will reverberate across the industry landscape. Many funds with external insurers – especially not-for-profits – have announced premium increases of 30-50% on their life and TPD policies in a […]

Read more…

Beyond technology – 6 groups doing interesting things

It’s amazing what you come across in the archives. In the process of preparing for our FSC conference presentation last week, Beyond Technology, we came across today’s diagram, a value chain of the industry around 1995-2005 when it was at the peak of its pricing power. It provides a remarkable comparison to the industry conditions […]

Read more…

Consolidation delayed – auto-con kicked into the long grass

One of the goals of Stronger Super is to increase scale in the Australian super system by encouraging, if not forcing, mergers of super funds. The formal part is a self-administered annual test on trustees that their MySuper members are not disadvantaged by a lack of scale in assets or members. It looked vague and […]

Read more…

Infrastructure – Australia’s corner of global asset management

Australia punches well above its weight in global pensions, with 20 million people having created a top 5 pension asset market thanks to compulsion. In comparison, Australian asset managers as a group haven’t enjoyed commensurate success. Yes, they dominate Australian equities as an asset class, but it’s low growth in terms of demand for active […]

Read more…

Can you buy an industry fund?

It’s a question that just will not die. Can you buy an industry fund? Can you sell one? Who’s the seller anyway? This question has been put to us pretty much every year that Tria has been around. We’ve been asked by retail competitors looking to build market share via acquisition, by stock analysts, and […]

Read more…

The apartment sized holes in FoFA

Happy New Financial Year, and that means welcome to the brave new world of FoFA. Now it’s not every day a CEO raises concerns when one of their products is selling really well. So recent worries expressed by BoQ CEO Stuart Grimshaw about the rapid growth of leveraged purchases of real estate by SMSFs, particularly […]

Read more…

FoFA preview – how it has reshaped the wealth industry

The next edition of Trialogue will be released into a post-FoFA world. What’s going to look different? FoFA is perhaps the most far-reaching industry reform since compulsory superannuation. It leaves the Stronger Super reforms in the shade; indeed one of the problems of Stronger Super was that FoFA basically stole its thunder (that’s how you […]

Read more…

Retail insurance – high hopes and how to realise them

One of the interesting data points of the 2012-13 Tria Super Funds Review is that while net inflows have been holding up in dollar terms, they are increasingly concentrated. 80% of industry net inflow goes to just 20% of the competitors. For the other 80% of competitors, net inflows are getting hard to come by. […]

Read more…

Lies, damned lies, and SMSF statistics

If you based your industry views on the breathless reporting of the ATO’s latest SMSF statistical report (for March 2013), you would think the SMSF segment was about to cave in. This quarterly data release was widely reported by the Australian Financial Review and others as reporting that the rate of establishment of SMSFs had […]

Read more…

How should AQUA II work?

How should AQUA II work, and what impact would it have if it did actually work? The impasse between the ASX and ASIC is said to revolve around an investor agreeing that they have read an electronic version of a PDS vs actually receiving a hard copy and providing a wet (ie ink) signature. That’s […]

Read more…

AQUA II can’t come soon enough for managed funds

Where is AQUA II? It’s a question we get regularly, and we’ve given up putting a date on it, having expected it to be launched a year ago. It’s becoming a bit like Elvis sightings – no-one seems to have any confidence in when it will appear and it risks becoming a bit of a […]

Read more…

MTAA RetireSafe – how do you distribute a complex product?

Can a not-for-profit – or anyone for that matter – successfully distribute a complex retirement income product? Just to make things more challenging, is it possible to distribute such a product directly to super fund members moving into the pension phase? The track record of these types of products is not especially encouraging. For every […]

Read more…

How do you get investors to respond to communication?

One of the big challenges of every marketing executive is working out how to get investors or super fund members to respond to communications directed to them. Mailing all investors in a fund is time consuming in production terms, hugely expensive to execute, and often achieves abysmal response rates. It’s not just poor return on […]

Read more…

Trio Capital fraud: all but certain to be repeated

The Government’s response last week to the report into the collapse of Trio Capital (that’s Trio, not Tria), and the associated Treasury Review of the Trio Capital Fraud and Assessment of the Regulatory Framework is unconvincing. Attention has focused on the proposed further tightening of capital and PI requirements on advisers, and the decision to […]

Read more…

ASIC crashes the MDA party

ASIC has been (fairly) criticized in past years for being slow to detect and react to problematic practices in the wealth industry, slamming the stable door after the horses have bolted. With managed discretionary accounts (MDAs), ASIC seems to be trying to get ahead of the game. Its Consultation Paper 200 (CP200) released in March […]

Read more…

SPS 530: a new APRA investment headache for super funds

If you’re a product manager for a super fund, you’ve heard about SPS 530 and are busy working out how to implement it. Well hopefully anyway. If you’re a CEO or board member exhausted from implementing Stronger Super, well no rest for the wicked. SPS 530 is not a new prescription drug. Rather, it’s APRA’s […]

Read more…

Super taxes: winners are…Challenger shareholders!

If any further confirmation was required that we are living through the superannuation version of “Dumb and Dumber”, Friday’s announcements should have provided it. The best that can be said for the “reforms” announced was that they were nowhere near as damaging to good policy as appeared possible a short time ago, which is why […]

Read more…

The return of reasonable benefit limits?

I’m not a fan of politicians’ speeches to industry events, which despite the ideal setting for a content discussion, tend to be long on political shots and short on policy discussion. But sometimes there are some pointers to decisions to come, which make the text worth reading. A good example of this was Ken Henry’s […]

Read more…

Is there a vertical integration conspiracy?

RG246’s silence on the issue of vertical integration has led some to conclude that this cannot be accidental. Is there an unofficial policy to encourage vertical integration of the wealth management industry? When I started in the industry (too many) years ago, vertical integration was a bit of a joke. The only vertically integrated players […]

Read more…

RG246 and the future of fund manager rebates

At this moment there are probably hundreds of lawyers poring over RG246, ASIC’s regulatory guide to conflicted remuneration, and consensus about what it means in practice may take months to emerge. RG246 has some laudable ambitions in addressing the impact of remuneration on advice, but there are some measures within it which appear excessive, to […]

Read more…

SSFS – Australia’s quietest super achiever

Successes in Australia’s super system rarely go unnoticed, thanks to how much is at stake, and in no little way to how much ego is involved. But a few slip under the radar screen. The rapid rise of Netwealth is one. Another, which is today’s topic, is State Super Financial Services (SSFS). Not much evades […]

Read more…

CSS – Australia’s strangest super scheme

Australia has some pretty interesting super funds. In Tria’s new edition of the Super Funds Review, the large fund universe ranges from AMP at the top with $68bn, to little AMIST at the bottom with $1bn. In between there are funds of virtually every type imaginable. But one of the strangest has to be the […]

Read more…

How fast is super growing?

When the world is running down, you make the best of what’s still around. Title of one of my favourite Police tracks from their classic 1980 album, Zenyatta Mondatta, and a hint at the state of the super system – growth is gradually slowing. So here are the answers just in case the CEO or […]

Read more…

Taxing super and unintended consequences

Right now we’re feeling pretty confident about our 2013 fearless forecast that the Labor Government would increase taxes on super in order to fund the NDIS and other election year initiatives. Not that we take any pleasure in that. We’d much rather be wrong. One of the brutal realities of the trench warfare of minority […]

Read more…

Investing for income in a world of disappearing yields

When we discuss significant developments for investors in the past 5 years, we usually think about volatility. But the really big change is actually the disappearance of yield. The trend started with government bond yields tumbling; Australia is about the only high quality sovereign for which 10 year bonds yield more than 3%. Bank deposits […]

Read more…

SMSF lessons from the Beardstown Ladies

One of the big problems for investors considering different approaches to super is the ability to accurately compare returns. Returns from collective funds – whether super funds or unit trusts – have to be prepared according to an agreed methodology so that one fund can be easily compared with another. Calculating the returns from a […]

Read more…

How much did the SMSF gurus cost investors in 2012?

It’s easy to take potshots at the collective funds segment of the super industry. It’s big, a lot of money is at stake, and it’s relatively transparent. It’s easy to tell who is doing well and who is not. Prominent amongst those taking the potshots are proponents of SMSFs, a competing solution to collective funds […]

Read more…

Super contributions boom?

Welcome back to Trialogue for 2013! Trialogue’s second year will see us back pulling apart the big industry developments, looking behind the numbers, and tackling the odd controversy. We have an interesting one to kick off the year. Last week APRA released its 2011-12 superannuation data. The most discussed figure has been total contributions of […]

Read more…

Tria’s fearless industry forecasts for 2013

For our final Trialogue for 2012, we’ve pulled together a selection of the Tria team’s industry themes for 2013. In no particular order, here they – Mayan calendar proves to be wrong – so you will need to actually deliver on your FoFA and Stronger Super programs. The trick is to do so with an […]

Read more…

Why the CBUS dispute is actually a good thing

David Atkin, CEO of major industry super fund CBUS is probably getting some Christmas cards he doesn’t really want this year, in the form of protest letters from members of Victorian construction unions. There are both worrying and heartening things about how an industrial dispute has moved into, and is playing out, in the super […]

Read more…

ASFA 2012: can funds provide viable alternatives to SMSFs?

At last week’s ASFA 2012 Conference in Sydney, Tria and SuperIQ presented a session titled “The Empire Strikes Back: can retail and industry funds provide a viable alternative to SMSFs”. One of the oddities of the contest between collective funds and SMSFs is who has been cast as goodies and baddies. For the ASFA session […]

Read more…

London calling – home of the free platform

Trialogue is coming to you from London this week. The UK is doing it pretty tough. The November weather is miserable. Like everywhere, the economy is being restructured by the digital revolution. To make things worse, it’s part of a deeply recessed Europe. There are more empty shops on the high street than when I […]

Read more…

Unstoppable – why the rise of SMSFs will continue

Over the past couple of weeks we’ve looked at some of the issues linked with the rise of SMSFs – in particular losses arising from incompetence and fraud. The rise of SMSFs is far from cost-free. In the quest for control and avoidance of collective fund fees, a whole new set of risks and costs […]

Read more…

SMSFs and Pink Batts – more in common than you think

People can go pretty nuts when government spending is seen as having been wasted. Pink batts, for example, became bywords for waste (not to mention safety hazards). Mention them in conversation and you can get some strong reactions. On that basis, we should be equally upset when SMSFs get caught up in financial collapses like […]

Read more…

Banksia hints at another SMSF disaster

Is ASIC rushing to slam yet another stable door after the horse has bolted, setting up an internal task-force to review regulation of the debenture industry? Having seen the financial and social devastation caused by the collapse of past financial institutions such as Pyramid Building Society, the collapse of Banksia had a depressingly familiar ring […]

Read more…

Who’s putting the case for funds?

Chatting with OneVue’s Steve Karrasch last week, just back from the AOIFP conference, I was interested to hear how he had been taken aback by how much funds were out of favour with conference delegates. The talk was about almost anything else – shares, equity models, indexing, ETFs, even LICs. Collective funds, whether super funds […]

Read more…

Disrupted days: practical strategies for incumbents

Our recent look at Kodak and FujiFilm was so popular that we thought we would look at some practical strategies for responding in disrupted situations. Disruptive situations do not occur often in financial services. The industry’s dominant business model tends to be stable for long periods of time – about 20 years for the most […]

Read more…

PC after all: awards become APLs

The final report of the Productivity Commission (PC) into Default Super Funds in Modern Awards was released last week to furor from the retail segment and the Coalition, and endorsement from the industry funds and the Government. Relative to the interim report and its reputation as an economic dry, it looks like the PC pulled […]

Read more…

Wealth’s Kodak moment?

As it gradually sinks in that we are working in a disrupted industry, it’s becoming increasingly common to hear the Kodak case study being brought up in discussions. Kodak (strictly speaking Eastman Kodak) was the dominant player in the photographic film and supplies industry for pretty much 100 years from the 1890s when the combination […]

Read more…

Yes, SMSF growth really has slowed

The ATO quietly released its June 2011 SMSF data a week or so ago. This confirmed what we have been saying for a while – that while the SMSF segment continues to grow, its rate of growth has slowed considerably. Moreover, the SMSF growth rate has converged with the growth rate of the large funds […]

Read more…

How to build a zero cost platform

The first ads for ING Direct’s Living Super are now on television, with the focus on the no-fee options as a solution for worried super fund members (picture a visual of a middle aged male – presumably the target market – who can’t sleep). The visual flashes to text outlining the options the no-fee feature […]

Read more…

ING Living Super: a first look at “no fee” super

David Hartley, CIO of Sunsuper, is well known for his critique of the cost agenda of MySuper, which I will summarise as “If you want low cost, I can give you a zero cost portfolio today – I’ll just invest it all in bank deposits”. Deposits have no explicit management costs, but generate plenty of […]

Read more…

Engaging the direct investor: Montgomery’s way

Given the gloominess of the mood in equities funds management, and the persistence of net outflows from Australian equities funds in particular, it can be hard to pick out any bright spots. But there are a few success stories which offer hints around product and marketing. We have previously noted Denning Pryce, which offers a […]

Read more…

Portfolio holdings disclosure – yes you do need to know

Portfolio holdings disclosure (PHD) is coming. Sounds boring? Well you need to know about PHD, because it is going to radically change how funds will communicate their investments and exposures to members going forward. The origins of PHD are now part of industry legend. This holds that the ASIC chairman was unable to get a […]

Read more…

Getting to grips with residential real estate returns

Retail players in wealth management face competitors on several dimensions. Firstly, there is the asset manager or platform provider down the road providing a similar product. Sizing up this type of competitor is straightforward as most of the key attributes – performance, pricing, features and so on – can be readily observed. Another type of […]

Read more…

How platforms can take on SMSFs

Last week we proposed a simple but effective regulatory response which would eliminate some of the more extreme investment practices being seen in SMSFs. Adopting the UK SIPP “taxable” property concept would have four key benefits: – Eliminate a range of dubious and / or high risk strategies involving residential real estate and personal / […]

Read more…

How to bring SMSFs back under control? Take a SIPP.

We had an enthusiastic (and alarmed) response to last week’s Trialogue example of an SMSF geared to the hilt to buy a crane. It’s pretty clear that there was a lack of awareness of the more adventurous SMSF strategies being proposed out there. A couple asked “ok, so what can we do about it?”. Very […]

Read more…

Now I really know SMSFs are out of control

I’ve been dropping in on some SMSF seminars lately. At the start, I was amazed. Now I’m aghast. My amazement sprang from the attendance at these seminars. I went to a widely advertised seminar series targeting members of collective funds, where there were 60 attendees (and this firm runs hundreds of seminars annually). At a […]

Read more…

Active ETFs – growth path or garden path?

One of the notable features of a managed funds industry under pressure has been a rotation towards the listed environment. Key aspects of this rotation have included migration by investors and planners from equity funds to direct shares, SMAs, equity models, and ETFs. Coming up fast behind this is the ASX’s AQUA II operating environment, […]

Read more…

New financial year – some thoughts for 2012/13

Welcome back from winter holidays, and strap yourself in for a no doubt eventful new financial year in wealth management. The holidays coincided with young Tom Baker turning 18, which caused me to think about the wealth management industry in 1994, and what we can learn. It’s strikingly similarity in terms of prevailing business conditions; […]

Read more…

Not very PC – MySuper as an awards buster?

We’ve never been fans of MySuper. As blueprint for a low cost default option for compulsory contributions, it has always seemed a largely pointless duplication of what already existed. This view is reinforced by the absence of widespread product development to build new MySuper products. By and large, not-for-profits are simply rebranding their existing defaults […]

Read more…

How to make $30 million from SMSFs

One of the interesting aspects of the rise of SMSFs is how it has allowed non-traditional players to enter the wealth management industry, and to make a lot of money in the process. These entrants include everyone from accountants to real estate agents to art galleries. My sister works in bullion dealing, and SMSFs are […]

Read more…

Auto-consolidation: super funds need marketing alpha too

Over the past couple of weeks I’ve been presenting at the FEAL June lunch series on the commercial impacts of Stronger Super. While the best known of the Stronger Super reforms is MySuper, it’s probably not the most important in terms of long term impact. The Stronger Super reform which will really transform the super […]

Read more…

Active equities: how’s your marketing alpha?

Today’s chart, prepared by our analyst Michael Toh, shows the depths of the misery in the active equity funds business. The chart shows launches of new funds and average assets per fund; and we have removed the market effect from average assets to give a better sense of investor movement. Although neither measure is perfect, […]

Read more…

Rethinking active equities businesses

These are tough days for active equities funds managers. The announcement last week of another closure of a fundamental equities business was the latest in an extended period of retrenchment in active Australian equities. This is not just an Australian phenomenon – you can see it happening in domestic equities in other major asset management […]

Read more…

SMSFs and the F word

No, not that F word. The F word we’re talking about regarding SMSFs is fraud. It’s hard to imagine why anyone robs banks anymore. By comparison SMSFs offer a $400 billion prize, they are a soft target, and the chance of being caught is small. Fraud is one of the hidden risks and costs of […]

Read more…

Beyond the Budget – 250,000 investors needing solutions

Despite the increase in the SG to 12%, the attractiveness of super has been on a slippery slope since the election of the ALP government. From the halving of concessional contribution limits and ad hoc pauses in limit indexation, through to the Federal Budget doubling contributions tax for high income earners and delaying contribution limit […]

Read more…

The battle for 5%: can the Wall of Money stand?

With a surprise 50bps cut in interest rates, and official rates now 3.75%, the question many are asking is how long the Wall of Money can stand. The Wall of Money was a concept we first discussed in late 2010 – the excess of deposit creation in the banking system over the long term trend. […]

Read more…

Super scale – how much is enough?

Despite consolidation efforts to date, there are still a large number of small to medium size collective super funds. One of the objectives of the Stronger Super reforms is to encourage scale. But how much scale is enough? All things being equal, funds’ boards generally want to maintain their independence. But they also have an […]

Read more…

Reading the tea leaves: simple numbers say a lot about funds

You can derive amazing insights about super funds, their health, and their performance relative to competitors from a deep drill into the numbers. But even some of the most basic data can tell you quite a lot about what a fund is thinking about – or should be. For example, consider member metrics. You can […]

Read more…

Short-form PDS: got your docs in a row?

One of the less appreciated areas of change in our industry is the transition to shorter PDSs. The new regime becomes compulsory for in-scope products from 22 June this year, taking the secateurs to the product disclosure statement (PDS) thicket, slashing them to just 8 pages. While the aims are laudable, the reality is that […]

Read more…

Australia’s large super funds – some key metrics

For analysts and observers of the Australian superannuation market, here are a few key metrics from the Tria Super Funds Review – to be digested over Easter along with chocolate (it’s much healthier): Number of large funds & AUM 81 funds with $820 bn System AUM growth 2011 11% Underlying growth 2011 5% Biggest player […]

Read more…

New: Tria launches Super Funds Review

Today marks the launch of the Tria Super Funds Review – our brand new research guide to the business metrics that matter in superannuation. Designed for superannuation competitors and major suppliers, particularly senior management, boards, and strategy groups, the focus of the Review is competitive positioning and performance, rather than investment performance and features. The […]

Read more…

Term Deposit rates: is the elephant leaving the room?

High term deposit rates have been the elephant in the room for income objective asset managers since 2008. The traditional retail mortgage fund category looks mortally wounded, and most fixed income funds (and other income funds for that matter) have suffered sustained outflows. While high headline TD rates have been an important problem, from a […]

Read more…

ASIC’s advertising guidelines & the real estate loophole

Last month, Australia’s securities regulator ASIC released RG234, a regulatory guide prescribing good practice in the advertising of financial products and advice. Overall RG234 makes sense. It is important to place parameters around the advertising of products and advice, and there have been too many past examples of aggressively advertised products (from Estate Mortgage onwards) […]

Read more…

The trouble with annuities – learning from the UK experience

As Australia’s population ages, and the superannuation system shifts towards pensions, an increasing amount of attention is being given to optimal retirement income strategy. Australia has a sophisticated understanding of how to run the accumulation phase of a defined contribution system, but much less of how to run the pension phase. There are two key […]

Read more…

Resurgence – how the SMSF tide can rise further (SMSF growth part 3)

Over the past couple of weeks, we’ve reviewed the data indicating that SMSF growth has moderated, as contribution caps have started to bite and the average new SMSF has shrunk. But what does this say about future growth prospects? Although SMSFs account for ~$400bn in assets, SMSF membership is still only ~5% of the working […]

Read more…

SMSF high tide? (has SMSF growth peaked, part 2)

Last week’s Trialogue questioning SMSF growth created a lot of interest – so to mark the SPAA conference we thought we’d follow up with some further analysis. Let’s be clear – we are not suggesting that SMSF growth has ceased. We are suggesting that the growth rate may have peaked, with the SMSF segment coming […]

Read more…

Has the SMSF tide peaked – or just paused?

Understanding SMSFs is not easy and it can be difficult to separate facts from opinion and outright hyperbole. It’s an extremely fragmented segment, so it’s hard to get a grip on how it looks as a whole, and how it is changing. The facts are relatively thin on the ground, mostly relying on ATO data […]

Read more…

Recovering the lost art of selling

Last week we looked at how sections of the wealth management industry have gradually lost touch with their end customers. This is actually true of both retail and institutional markets. Many retail asset managers are now largely intermediated by researchers, platforms and large dealer groups; and in institutional by asset consultants. Some players have responded […]

Read more…

Retail and the lost art of selling (part 1)

For a prospective customer, there’s nothing like seeing a product firsthand. Chatting recently with an ex- Head of Retail, he recounted a 1990s initiative to charter a light plane to fly half a dozen financial planners to Western Australia to visit a remote mine owned by a resources company their funds had invested in. If […]

Read more…

Getting fund disclosure right

Disclosure was a 1994 potboiler of a film featuring Demi Moore as a power crazed executive sexually harassing Michael Douglas, playing one of her reports. Yup, seriously, that was the plot. Fund disclosure has become a hot topic already in 2012, and it has also taken on a rather hysterical tone, inclusive of absurd headlines […]

Read more…

Platforms in 2012

We’re opening the year with some thoughts about platforms in 2012, given that our last Trialogue looking at Member Direct, AustralianSuper’s new direct-to-consumer super wrap, created enormous interest. As we all know, the retail platform business model is under pressure from: • A large and growing self-directed investor segment which is using SMSFs as its […]

Read more…

AustralianSuper’s big HNW move

It has been a big finish to 2011 for Australia’s largest industry fund, and we’re not talking about the merger with AGEST, which will take the fund to a massive $50bn in assets. As significant a milestone as this is, for us the big story is the launch of Member Direct, AustralianSuper’s latest response to […]

Read more…

Basel III, TD’s, and reincarnation as an SMSF

In 1993, one of President Clinton’s advisers famously said that he wanted to be reincarnated as the bond market, because then “you can intimidate everybody”. As for me, I want to come back as a self-managed super fund (SMSF). You can do pretty much whatever you like, your parents relax the rules when you throw […]

Read more…

FoFA and the fault lines shaping advice

Tria was recently asked to participate in a roundtable discussion with a leading group of industry thinkers to discuss the “real future of financial advice”. Along with Tria’s Mark Watmore were representatives from aligned advice groups, independent advice groups, the FPA, and technology providers. As big an impact as FoFA is having, particularly on independent […]

Read more…

Governing a $200 billion super fund

Fund governance was a recurring theme of the recent ASFA conference. It’s something we are going to hear a lot more of. Danielle Press, the new CEO of EquipSuper, offered a fairly blunt contrast of the super industry’s expectations of governance from its investments and fund managers; and the (lesser, in her view) governance standards […]

Read more…

Why are platform prices falling?

MLC’s announcement of reduced 2012 pricing structure for Masterkey Fundamentals is a reminder of two strong trends in retail wealth: Falling prices for platforms. Intense competition for platform business before FOFA commences. At the Tria Strategy Breakfasts in October we described how the role of platforms as a tollgate in the retail industry’s prevailing business […]

Read more…

The $5 trillion super industry

This week’s Trialogue comes to you from the ASFA conference in Brisbane, the annual gathering of the superannuation industry. Tria is speaking at ASFA on the topic of a $5 trillion superannuation industry; ie the future shape of super. As of June 2011, there was around $1.3 trillion in Australian super funds, so there is […]

Read more…

Market consolidation – or not?

What’s wrong with this chart? The chart shows the percentage of total super system assets accounted for by funds with greater than $1bn in assets – across all segments including industry funds, public sector funds, corporate funds, and retail (data sourced from annual reports, APRA, and Tria analysis). As can be clearly seen, the share […]

Read more…