Eight funds recognised as RI leaders

Eight superannuation funds have been recognised as responsible investment leaders by the Responsible Investment Association of Australasia.

In the Responsible Investment Benchmark Report Australia 2022 from the Responsible Investment Association of Australasia (RIAA) and EY, there were eight funds recognised as leaders. These were funds or companies that achieved a score higher than 75% on RIAA’s responsible scorecard.

This included areas such as commitment to responsible investing and transparency, enhancing risk management, being strong stewards for sustainable and resilient assets and allocating capital to benefit stakeholders.

The eight super funds were:

• Active Super;
• Australian Super;
• Aware Super;
• Cbus;
• Christian Super;
• HESTA;
• Rest; and
• UniSuper.

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However, the report noted the recent Your Future, Your Super reforms had had an adverse impact on the growth of environmental, social and governance matters in super, a new factor for 2022.

“Two new barriers identified by respondents were a lack of internal resources, such as the time or staff to tackle the complexities involved in creating new responsible investment products, and the adverse effect of benchmarking, notably, Your Future, Your Super.”

The main barrier was performance concerns followed by lack of viable product options and lack of public awareness of responsible investment. On the flip side, demand from institutional investors was cited as the second-highest driver of market growth.

Four out of five Australians said they expected their superannuation account to be invested responsibly and 74% said they would move to another provider if their super fund invested in companies engaged with activities inconsistent with their values.