The majority of Australian superannuation funds do not expect to make any changes to their equities allocation within their fund in the foreseeable future.
An audience poll at the Australian Superannuation Investment (ASI) Conference 2012 found about 52 per cent of participants, which included super fund investment professionals, trustees and fund managers, said they would keep their allocation to equities the same in the next 12 months, while 26 per cent said they would reduce their allocation to equities.
Only 22 per cent said they would increase their allocation to equities.
Recently, the debate about whether Australian superannuation portfolios are too heavily skewed towards equities has been reinvigorated, with former Treasury secretary Ken Henry making the case for a higher allocation to bonds.
A session at the ASI conference at the Gold Coast yesterday explored what a proper balance between bonds and equities was.
Balanced Equity Management managing director Andrew Sisson made the case for relatively high levels of equity exposure, saying statistically there was only a 10 per cent chance cash would outperform equities over the next decade when looking at past returns.
"If you buy a bond now and hold it for 10 years, your yield is likely to be 3.3 per cent. Inflation, the Reserve Bank has a target of between 2 and 3 per cent, let's assume it is 2.5 per cent. That gives you less than a per cent real return," Sisson said.
"I can't see that if your objective is to look after members, that that is a satisfactory outcome."
He also said bonds had historically been more volatile than generally assumed.
"When inflation takes off, bonds fall very, very sharply," he said.
But QSuper head of investment strategy Damian Lillicrap said that in current balanced portfolios, 80 per cent to 90 per cent of the risk came from equities, while that level of risk remained generally unquestioned.
"Often we stick to off-the-shelf products without asking: 'Are these the right products for our members?'" Lillicrap said.
But he also said finding a more balanced solution did not mean just increasing the allocation to bonds.
"I would be very concerned if anyone here would take a bond portfolio and put it forward as their default option," he said.
Instead, he argued for a better diversified portfolio, which included assets such as high-yield bonds, property and modestly-geared infrastructure.
Frontier Advisors senior investment consultant Rob Hogg said funds were also increasingly looking at alternative investments, including absolute return funds, floating rate debt, or buying downside protection.
But in the end, the big levers for maximising returns were not found in asset allocation, Lillicrap said.
Achieving a comfortable retirement can be better achieved by increasing member contributions and delaying the age of retirement.
