The new data comes from Roy Morgan’s ‘satisfaction with financial performance of superannuation in Australia report which showed that fund members are more satisfied with the performance of industry funds than retail.
This data combined with performance tables that regularly place industry funds above retail funds needs to be considered when selecting the ten best funds said Roy Morgan’s industry communications director Norman Morris.
“This research shows that fund member ratings of who are the best performers should be taken into account as input into determining the top 10. The reason for including what fund members think in assessing the best performers is that they have the final decision on choice of fund, so their opinion counts,” he said.
According to Roy Morgan’s lastest data, eight of the top 10 funds based on satisfaction were industry funds, with the highest rated being Catholic Super with 70.5 per cent followed by Unisuper of 69.7 per cent.
The retail funds that made the list were ASGARD with 65.1 per cent and Macquarie with 63.7 per cent but both fell below the average of 65.5 per cent for the top ten.
The five major retail funds had an average satisfaction rating of 54.7 per cent which was below the industry fund average of 61.8 per cent.
The best performer of the five major funds was Colonial First State with 60.7 per cent while AMP was the lowest of all the funds reported with 50.4 per cent satisfaction.
Satisfaction with industry funds continued to grow by 61.8 per cent in the six months leading up to November 2018, and an increase of 2.6 percentage points from November 2017.
Mr Morris said that market fluctuations made funds subject to regular change which meant that over the long-term there would be many changes.
“Consumers may choose the top fund one day only to have it slide down the ranking.
“We have seen this happen with our satisfaction ratings, where only three funds out of the top ten have remained in this group for the last three years. As superannuation is a very long-term process, it is likely that over a number of decades there will be a large number of ranking changes.”
