Customer satisfaction with retail super funds beat out industry super funds by just 0.5 per cent at 58.7 per cent and 58.2 per cent, respectively, research from Roy Morgan has shown.
SMSFs beat out both retail and industry funds, with 73.8 per cent of trustees saying they were ‘very or fairly satisfied’ with their fund’s financial performance.
However, when broken down to individual fund performers, no retail funds managed to make the top five. Qsuper took the lead with 73.3 per cent of customers who felt ‘very or fairly satisfied’ with its financial performance.
This was followed by Cbus at 65.7 per cent, Unisuper at 64.8 per cent, HESTA at 62.3 per cent and AustralianSuper at 60.5 per cent.
The highest-performing retail super fund was Colonial First State, which came in sixth at 60.3 per cent of customers.
In the six months leading up to July 2017, SMSF’s lead over other super funds was most prominent in the bracket where superannuation account balances were $700,000 or more.
“Although SMSFs are the clear satisfaction leaders in the $700,000+ segment, they are not so dominant in the $250,000 to $699,999 segment where competition is very close among the three major fund types,” the research report said.
“In this segment, industry funds lead with 72.6 per cent satisfaction, followed by SMSFs (71.8 per cent) and retail funds (68.9 per cent).
“The overall lead in satisfaction among SMSFs is a result of the fact that they really only operate with larger balance accounts, where satisfaction for all super types is higher.”
Roy Morgan Research industry communications director Norman Morris said it was important for super funds to watch members’ perceptions of performance.
“Although performance tables are produced and published regularly, it is unlikely that the majority of fund members will be sufficiently engaged to follow these tables but rather act or not on how they feel about the performance of their current fund,” Mr Morris said.
“Although industry funds have held a lead in satisfaction over retail funds for a decade or more, it now appears that retail funds have closed the gap and in fact taken a narrow lead.”
