‘Surprising and disappointing’: Greater innovation needed in retirement strategies

“We have known for some time that a population bulge has been moving through the system so it is both surprising and disappointing that, as an industry, we haven’t made better progress on retirement products or portfolio construction,” Mr Wright said.

“In recent years we have seen innovation from advisers making more of a distinction between accumulation and decumulation portfolios, and managed accounts have also played an important part in this process.

“However these approaches are still largely ad-hoc with little in the way of industry standards or benchmarks.”

Chant West general manager Ian Fryer added that the government’s Your Future, Your Super legislation will help, but echoed concerns throughout the industry about the bill needing amendments.

“We have reservations about the use of one metric over a single period to determine whether a super fund passes or fails, and therefore whether it can continue to operate in its current form,” Mr Fryer said of the legislation.

“The asymmetry of consequences of the proposed performance test — between not meeting the benchmark and doing much better than it — will inevitably lead to poorer investment outcomes for members in some funds, as the focus shifts in those funds from long-term performance to passing the test.

“The good news is that funds with strong historical performance can probably continue to invest as they always have, and just keep an eye on performance relative to the test which may impact what benchmarks they target in each asset sector.”