Not-for-profit funds were once again the big winners following the announcement late last month of the fourth round of the proposed default funds under the federal government's award modernisation program.

AustralianSuper was named as a proposed default fund in 17 out of a possible 29 awards in the final round of the award modernisation process.
 
Industry fund Sunsuper came a close second, being named in 12 awards, and Tasplan and Asset Super were named as the default fund in 11 awards.

State-based funds Statewide and Westscheme featured in four awards each. 

Retail funds featured most prominently in the health and welfare - fitness, lifestyle and leisure - services sector, with ING-Integra and AMP (Retirement Savings Account, Flexible Lifetime Superannuation) being named alongside AustralianSuper and Club Super among other industry funds.

The stage four awards cover industries as diverse as funeral directing, firefighting services, local government administration and the restaurant and catering industry.

Not-for-profit funds have featured strongly in the award modernisation process.

The stage one awards, which covered priority awards such as racing, higher education and mining, were announced last year.

AustralianSuper and Sunsuper were frontrunners again, being named in five awards each out of a possible 17.

In the stage two and stage three awards announced earlier this year, AustralianSuper garnered nominations in 40 awards, followed by Sunsuper with 32 and Tasplan with 28.

Sunsuper chief executive Tony Lally said the outcome of the award modernisation process could change the superannuation system significantly.

"[It could change the system significantly] because some of the multi-industry funds like AustralianSuper and us are across all the awards, where the single industry awards are also," Lally said.

"The competition is going to be quite intense, so it also means that the smaller funds who have their own award will now have a lot of competition from the bigger funds in their awards."

The final consultations in relation to the exposure drafts of the stage four awards were completed in Melbourne last week and the final date for the announcement of stage four is 4 December.