Let’s talk about choice

Understanding the APRA heatmap

We believe that it is only fair that every Australian should have greater transparency around the performance of the superannuation industry, and APRA’s heatmap is a significant step in the right direction.  

What is the APRA Heatmap?

The APRA heatmap is intended to provide clear and comparable insights on the performance of MySuper products and a selection of choice products.

The heatmap helps to gain insight into the performance of MySuper and a sub-set of Choice products across super funds.

It compares investment returns, fees, costs, and sustainability practices.

What is a Choice product and a MySuper product?

A choice product is one you choose, rather than the default MySuper product chosen for you by your employer.

A MySuper product is the default product that your employer will pay the super guarantee contributions into unless you choose a different super fund.

MySuper products aim to offer lower fees, simple features and with a single diversified or a lifecycle investment option.

You can also choose to invest your superannuation to a MySuper product.

Which Rest products were included?

The Core Strategy is Rest’s default investment option. Members who don’t make an investment choice or actively choose to invest all their money in the Core Strategy, will be a MySuper member. The MySuper product is available in both Rest Super and Rest Corporate.

Core Strategy has been included in the APRA heatmap since it commenced.

This year, seven of our Choice investment options are also included in the heatmap. They are:

  • Capital Stable
  • Balanced
  • Diversified
  • High Growth
  • Balanced – Indexed
  • Sustainable Growth
  • Shares

In coming years, APRA will add more of Rest’s Choice products into the heatmap. This time, they only focused on multi-sector open accumulation products.

Rest Pension’s investment options are not included in the heatmap. 

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How did we stack up?

Rest has a strong history of investment performance built around a long-term philosophy focused on the specific needs of our unique membership profile which is characterised by a younger and lower balance demographic. 

As recently as 2015 Rest portfolios were the best performers in the super league tables over all time periods.

The seven-year period to 30 June 2021 (particularly 2018 and 2019) investors who were prepared to take on a greater risk profile saw stronger performance. At Rest, we took a different investment approach, focusing our efforts on choosing investments that would produce positive stable returns and be resilient when the market went down.

However, equity markets rallied more than we expected, particularly in higher-risk growth stocks, making this traditionally more conservative approach less effective over this period relative to some other super funds.

What are we doing to improve performance?

As part of our ongoing investment monitoring and commitment to review and evolve our investment approach, we’ve repositioned our asset mix and readjusted our portfolio to accommodate shorter-term performance horizons.

 

Breaking down our performance

Rest’s Core Strategy

delivers 17.4% return for year ending 30 June 2021

Capital Stable

delivers 9.14% return for year ending 30 June 2021

Balanced

delivers 13.91% return for year ending 30 June 2021

Diversified

delivers 19.18% return for year ending 30 June 2021

High Growth

delivers 23.17% return for year ending 30 June 2021

Shares

delivers 27.62% return for year ending 30 June 2021

Balanced Indexed

delivers 19.9% return for year ending 30 June 2021

Sustainable Growth

This option was launched on 29 March  2021. As at 30 November 2021 the option had delivered strong six month returns of 7.38%

Returns are for Rest Super and Rest Corporate products. For Rest Pension returns, please visit our Investment Performance page. Past performance is not an indicator of future performance.

Which investment option is right for me?

As a Rest member, you can use our online advice tools to help you decide which investment option is right for you.