How we invest your super

As a profit-for-member fund, we’re run only to benefit members. Super is one of your most important assets. Our job is to grow it over time.

Our team of investment experts actively manage your super to deliver strong, long-term returns – empowering you to enjoy a better future with confidence and financial security.

Our approach is centred around our core investment philosophy, supported by strong governance and a disciplined process. This ensures every decision we make is in members’ best financial interest.

Key pillars of our investment strategy

As Australia’s largest¹ and most trusted super fund², we use our size, capabilities and global reach to help deliver strong long-term returns. Our investment strategy is designed to help you retire with more confidence. Key pillars of our strategy include:

• Active management
• Diversification
• Internal expertise
• Global opportunities

How we manage investments

We take an active approach to investment management. That means:

• we select specific asset classes, sectors and investments that we believe will outperform the broader market.
• we’re hands-on, actively monitoring and adjusting the investment portfolio. 
• we make decisions based on the analysis of companies, industries and economic trends. 

Active management allows us to be adaptable as we seek out investments with long-term value. That makes us more responsive to market changes.

It also allows us to integrate the consideration of Environmental Social Governance (ESG) risks and opportunities into the Fund’s investment, stewardship and advocacy activities, with the extent of our approach varying by asset class and investment characteristics, including whether we’re investing directly or through external managers, or whether our investment is actively or passively held.

We apply active management when deciding:

1. how much to allocate to different asset classes in the PreMixed investment options.
2. to buy and sell individual investments.

In some cases, we use index managers to gain specific investment exposure or to assist with liquidity. This helps keep portfolio costs low where active management opportunities are smaller. 

We also offer the Indexed Diversified option for members seeking a passive investment strategy. 

Why we invest in a diverse range of assets

Diversification is the practice of spreading your money across different investments. It means you’re not putting all your resources in one place. A well-diversified portfolio is intended to reduce overall risk and volatility, which can help cushion the impacts of market downturns. 

As one of the top 20 largest pension funds in the world³, our size and scale mean you have access to some of the world’s best investment opportunities, which may not be available to smaller investors. 

Unlisted assets are an integral part of most member investment options. They include: 

• Unlisted infrastructure 
• Unlisted property 
• Private equity 
• Private credit  

Unlisted assets have generally offered strong and stable returns over the long term. They also align well with the longer-term time horizon of superannuation. That’s why more than a quarter of the Balanced option is invested in unlisted assets⁴. 

We don’t necessarily need to sell existing assets to invest in new opportunities. Our size, scale and strong recurring cash flows mean we can take a long-term view and continue to invest through market ups and downs. 

Investments backed by knowledge and expertise

Your investments are overseen by more than 400 specialists located across 7 global offices⁴. The team has been making direct investments since 2013, with a proven capability of undertaking large-scale, sophisticated transactions. 

We’ve increased the proportion of investments that are managed internally. Almost 60% of our investment portfolio is internally managed and that number continues to grow⁴. 

Internal management benefits members by:

• reducing investment costs, 
• enhancing investment control and oversight and 
• making us more agile and responsive to changing market conditions.

Importantly, we’re only internalising the parts of the portfolio where we believe it will generate a net benefit to members. Where we believe it's more cost-effective, we partner with leading external investment managers, using our size and scale to drive better fee outcomes.

When it comes to your super, net benefit is one of the most important factors to consider. The net benefit of an investment is your return minus any fees, costs and taxes.

Investing locally and globally

As an AustralianSuper member, your super is working hard for your retirement while also helping support the growth of our economy. 

We have more than $170 billion invested domestically⁴. And by 2030, our investment in Australia is forecast to exceed $260 billion. That's equivalent to around 9% of Australia’s forecasted Gross Domestic Product⁵. That means more support for Australian businesses, jobs and communities. 

We also invest globally to give members access to the best investment opportunities around the world. Australia currently makes up less than 2% of global investment markets⁶. So, investing globally helps reduce our domestic concentration risk. 

We were the first industry super fund to establish investment offices overseas, beginning in 2012. We now have offices and local expertise in London, New York and Beijing. Having a global team helps position us to deliver better outcomes for members over the long term. 

Our presence on the ground gives us targeted insights and opportunities in global markets. It means we can trade when local markets trade and better monitor our global investments. It also helps us scale our investments in unlisted assets.