QSuper has awarded three mandates worth around $10 billion to State Street Global Advisors (SSgA).
The new mandates are all passive and track benchmarks of asset classes including Australian equities, international equities and global real estate investment trusts, SSgA said in a statement.
The index’s specifically are the S&P/ASX 200 Accumulation Index, MSCI World ex-Australia Index and UBS Global Real Estate Investors Index.
All three mandates include a “tax-aware” component, SSgA said.
The deal reflected growing interest among superannuation funds in tax-aware mandates, SSgA senior managing director in Australia Rob Goodlad said.
“This involves reviewing the tax position and history of each portfolio and aiming to trade each portfolio to ensure all available franking credits are retained,” he said.
“Such strategies are designed to avoid unnecessary realisation of capital gains and ensure any gains that must be realised are discounted. These aims are balanced against the need to generate index-like returns over time.”
Goodlad said there had been a strong market trend towards investing in passive equities in general.
“Passive management has become a highly specialised skill and there are now a range of advanced beta strategies designed to capture unique returns, diversify portfolios or express specific investment views that aren’t achievable simply by tracking market capitalisation weighted indices,” he said.
QSuper has $28 billion in funds under management and over 530,000 members.
