Outstanding returns put Brighter Super on a roll in latest fund rankings

17 May 2023

Brighter Super’s MySuper option has held its position as the second highest returning product in its class this financial year, in the latest rankings of investment returns to the end of March 2023.

Brighter Super’s default MySuper option lifted its return for the financial-year-to-date to 8.15% in the nine months to 31 March 2023. This compared with a median return on comparable funds of 6.89% over the same period, giving it an outperformance of 1.26%.

The ranking information is from data collected by independent agency SuperRatings*, which analyses and rates more than 1,900 different superannuation offerings.

SuperRatings also ranked Brighter Super’s Balanced and Growth options among the top five in class in its survey of financial year-to-date returns to the end of March.

Brighter Super Chief Investment Officer, Mark Rider, said: “The strong performance we are seeing across our funds reflects the strength of returns from our shares portfolios, both international and Australian, along with our infrastructure portfolio. Both Australian shares and infrastructure have provided a very effective hedge against the impact of higher inflation in recent years.’’

Mr Rider said the fund was underweight in cash “which has been beneficial’’.

Brighter Super’s active international equities portfolio has continued to outperform its benchmark, as has also been the case for infrastructure. The fund’s position in diversified fixed-interest assets financial year to date had also outperformed, driven by its exposure to credit, he said.

The MySuper option in particular has benefited from a bias towards Australian equities, which performed better than most other asset classes over the nine months since the end of June last year. Being underweight in private equity relative to peers has also been a positive for performance versus other funds.

“The results over the three quarters are really pleasing,’’ Mr Rider said.

“We are very happy with the way the fund has performed and has been the product of a lot of hard work since the merger of LGIAsuper and Energy Super in 2021. 

“It reflects we’ve been very conscious about the risks that we are taking across the different asset classes,’’ he said.

The result for the MySuper option means it has been able to hold on to its place as the second highest-returning fund at the end of the March quarter, a position it also held after the first six months of the financial year to the end of December.

Our MySuper option was last year judged by Money magazine to be the Best-Value MySuper Product for 2023 in its ‘Best of the Best’ awards.

Almost half of Brighter Super membership are invested in the MySuper option.

Brighter Super’s Balanced option was ranked fourth in the SR50 Ratings Index with a financial-year-to-date return of 8.22% to the end of March. This was 1.46% above the median average performance of 6.76% for comparable funds.

Brighter Super’s Growth option was ranked fifth in the SR50 Ratings with a financial-year-to-date return to the end of March of 9.43%. This was 1.23% above the median return for comparable funds of 8.2%.

The top-five performance by the MySuper, Growth and Balanced options came as equity markets were generally stronger in the March quarter as global inflation fears eased.

However, banking stress in the United States and Europe caused concerns, particularly after the Silicon Valley Bank entered receivership in the US and Credit Suisse was sold to UBS in Europe.

Australia’s S&P 300 Index rose 3.3% for the March quarter.

US equities rose 7.7% as inflation declined to 5% year on year in March and Chinese equities rose 5.1% amid signs of a rebound in economic activity in the first quarter of 2023 after the reopening of the Chinese economy in late 2022.

Mr Rider said the merger of LGIASuper with Energy Super in 2021 had come at an opportune time. 

“That was around the time when markets started to change, and I think it provided an opportunity for the fund to set the portfolio for the period ahead. That was a good opportunity. But the point is that the opportunity was there, and we seized it,’’ Mr Rider said.