Speaking to InvestorDaily, Mr Rhind – who heads up DST’s Anova Performance product in the Asia Pacific – said certain sections of the super industry have been looking at bringing their Aussie equities management in-house for the past 12 to 18 months.
AustralianSuper has been the most vocal about its intention to take on some internal funds management, he said – while QSuper, on the other hand, has gone public about its intention to continue outsourcing.
For the funds that have decided to go ahead with insourcing, the focus has been Australian equities management, he said.
“We’re not seeing international mandates coming in-house because it’s about acquiring local expertise,” Mr Rhind said.
The case for insourcing Australian equities management is particularly compelling from a ‘member benefit’ perspective, he said.
“What’s been driving super funds is that they’re paying fees to do something that really is quite easy,” Mr Rhind said, adding that most importantly, super funds are not “paying over the odds to [hire investment staff]”.
“They’re recruiting talent from fund managers, administrators and custodians when it comes to investment operations,” he said.
Investment staff are excited about the prospect of working at a super fund because it is something of a “blank slate”, he added.
“Superannuation funds don’t have a lot of the legacy IT systems associated with the firms that have been doing this for a long time,” Mr Rhind said.
“What they’re doing is attracting people who want to build something rather than inherit something. And that’s proving quite attractive for people in the market who see that as a good opportunity for them.”
As for DST, superannuation is a “growth area” for the firm, Mr Rhind said.
“Traditionally we’ve serviced fund managers and custodians and administrators for a long time – both domestically and overseas,” he said.
Anova has been built to support the front offices, middle offices and administration of fund managers, Mr Rhind said.
“It translates well around the different players in the market,” he said. “Superannuation funds only become a growth client set as they started to evolve their business models to bring things in-house.”
