Equip’s Balanced Growth investment option returned 11.9% for the 2016-17 year, which placed it in the Top 10 performers for the year in a recently published Australian Financial Review article (note this may only be accessible to AFR subscribers).
Equip investment options generally performed exceptionally well in the last financial year, ranging from a 5.7% return for the Conservative option up to 16.4% for the higher risk Growth Plus option, which reflected the healthy returns delivered by local and overseas share markets.
Pension members, most of whom benefit from the tax-free earning status of their investments received even better returns with, for example, Balanced Growth delivering 12.4% for the financial year.
The year was exceptional in the context of some largely unanticipated political events. Brexit created uncertainty and volatility, while the surprise election of US President, Donald Trump, triggered an extended share market rally.
The outlook for the 2017-18 financial year is that economic fundamentals around the world are still quite strong. An offset to that is that most asset classes are fully priced and it would not take a substantial upward shift in interest rates by central banks to cause a price retreat for some assets.
One of our concerns is the apparent high risk appetite of investors seeking growth in this sort of market without too much regard for downside risk.
Our job as your super fund will be to maintain a long term focus and ensure that the investments we make on your behalf properly take into account the risks associated with them.
While it’s great that our short and long term investment performance was included in the Top 10 funds, a consistent and risk-aware approach to investing is ultimately what will help deliver the sort of retirement income that will provide you with a comfortable retirement.
Note that an earlier survey published by News Limited newspapers, based on a Chant West survey, excluded Equip from the Top 10 list. This is because the Chant West survey excludes investment options with less than $1 billion invested in them, which is the case for the Equip Balanced Growth option.
You can visit this page to see our end of financial year investment returns.
