The superannuation survey looked at the performance both of commercial for profit and industry superannuation over the 2012/2013 financial year and found the median super fund over the year returned 16.7 per cent.
This is the highest growth in the past 16 years, since the average fund returned 19.9 per cent in 1997.
Superannuation “benefited from the robust performance of growth assets over the financial year”, Morningstar said.
The best-performing Australian growth funds over the year to 30 June 2013 were Legg Mason Growth (27.0 per cent); Balanced (24.8 per cent); Maple-Brown Abbott (21.0 per cent); Perpetual Balanced Growth (19.2 per cent); and REST Super Diversified (18.7 per cent).
Longer term, Schroders (6.9 per cent) came out on top over the five years to June 30, followed by REST Super Core (6.0 per cent).
In its institutional survey, the research house found international shares achieved the best return of all assets in the financial year (33.1 per cent), followed by Australian property (24.2 per cent). Australian shares also performed well (21.9 per cent), as did international property (15.5 per cent).
In local share market sectors, healthcare recorded the highest return for the financial year (42.0 per cent), followed by telecommunications (39.4 per cent) and financials (36.3 per cent).
The poorest performing sectors were materials, which was down 9.2 per cent, followed by resources, which lost 8.4 per cent for the year.
The median Australian share fund manager outperformed the index by 3.2 per cent, returning 25.1 per cent over the 12 months to 30 June 2013. The best-performing strategies in that period were Millenium (42.2 per cent), Lazard Select (41.7 per cent) and Lazard (37.2 per cent).
Meanwhile, the median international share fund manager returned was 33.9 per cent over the year, with Orbis (51.5 per cent), Wellington Growth (42.8 per cent) and Magellan (42.2 per cent) recording the best returns.
