Australia’s top super funds have climbed in global rankings but their assets pale in comparison to the world’s dominant asset owners.
Australia’s largest superannuation funds have continued to advance in the global rankings of institutional investors, yet the scale difference between Australia and the world’s largest asset owners remains significant.
The latest Asset Owner 100 from WTW and the Thinking Ahead Institute revealed that the top 100 funds worldwide now oversee US$29.3 trillion, an 11.3 per cent increase driven mainly by sovereign wealth funds and large public pension schemes.
Five major regional clusters dominate this landscape, each of them managing several trillion dollars and far outweighing Australia’s superannuation grouping.
Europe’s ‘Euro 9’ holds US$3.5 trillion, the Gulf’s five sovereign funds manage US$3.9 trillion and the US ‘Public 7’ and Canada’s ‘Maple 8’ together exceed US$4.5 trillion in combined assets.
On the other hand, Australia’s ‘Super 6’ cluster — AustralianSuper, Australian Retirement Trust, Aware Super, UniSuper, Hostplus and Cbus — manage roughly US$0.7 trillion.
This reflects a rapidly-growing industry but one that is structurally dispersed because member choice distributes savings across multiple vehicles rather than concentrating them in a single national fund.
The difference in scale becomes more pronounced when examining individual institutions. Norway’s Norges Bank Investment Management leads the world at US$1.74 trillion, followed by Japan’s Government Pension Investment Fund at US$1.65 trillion and China’s SAFE Investment Company at US$1.42 trillion.
Australia’s relative position within the Asia-Pacific region adds further contrast. The region accounts for 30.8 per cent of global assets, but most of this capital is held by Japan, China and South Korea, whose centrally pooled pension and sovereign systems dwarf the size of individual Australian funds.
AustralianSuper, the largest domestic fund at US$212.3 billion, ranks 36th, while Future Fund holds US$204 billion and sits at 40th.
Despite being smaller, Australia’s leading funds have been steadily climbing the rankings. AustralianSuper has risen 17 places since 2017, reflecting sustained growth, compulsory contributions and increasing investment sophistication.
Future Fund’s position signals strong performance among sovereign wealth institutions and reinforces the upward trajectory of Australian capital in global markets.
The Super 6 remains a comparatively young cluster, still in the process of building the maturity and concentration that characterise the dominant North American, European and Gulf groupings.
At the same time, Australia’s funds have been adopting global best practice in governance, portfolio construction and investment strategy.
The use of total-portfolio approaches is expanding, international partnerships are deepening and internal investment capabilities are becoming more sophisticated.
According to the report, these developments are enabling Australian funds to participate more meaningfully in private markets, infrastructure and other scale-intensive sectors.
The global rankings also highlighted why the world’s largest funds maintain such a strong lead. Sovereign wealth vehicles and centralised public pension schemes operate with structural advantages such as consolidated asset pools, unified mandates and the ability to deploy capital at long horizons without member churn.
Australia’s competitive multi-fund model does not permit the same concentration of assets, even though it has produced some of the world’s fastest-growing pension institutions.
Even with these constraints, Australia’s super funds are increasing their influence, according to the report. Their rising global rankings, expanding offshore portfolios and growing involvement in major co-investments show a system that is integrating more deeply into global capital flows.
Their trajectory suggests continued ascent, although the sheer scale of dominant sovereign funds means Australia will remain smaller in absolute terms for the foreseeable future.
