Super moving back to the black

Has your likely superannuation pay-out picked up, now that there has been an unsteady recovery on world share markets?

The short answer to that question is “yes” – but not by as much as many experts had hoped.

Jeff Bresnahan, who keeps an eye on these trends, said the gains Australia’s superannuation funds have made on the share market in March have been offset by both a rising Australian dollar and a continuing re-evaluation of unlisted assets.

Bresnahan, who is the managing director of Super Ratings said Australia’s superannuation funds made a mid-level recovery of 2.24 per cent in March.

But he admitted that was “somewhat below expectations”  as world share markets chalked up gains of more than 8 per cent last month.

The month’s results, though, were still the best Australia’s superannuation funds have recorded for some time.

As fund  members are all too well aware, last September’s share market collapse hit the reserves of Australia’s super funds very hard.

Its impact is reflected very clearly in the latest Super Ratings figures,.

They show that the value of the assets held by Australia’s superannuation funds fell by no less than 17.35 per cent in the 12 months to the end of March.

And, despite the 2.24 per cent gain in March, the funds still suffered an overtall loss of 3.69 per cent, in the three months to the end of March.

As Australians still have more than $1 trillion in their superannuation funds, even those small percentages still represent very big losses, when counted in  dollars.

Still millions of Australian workers will be delighted to see these funds starting to make gains again, after such a black patch.

But fund members have learnt, the hard way, over recent months, that keeping an eye on their’s funds investment strategies is wise.

And the latest Super Ratings report confirms that.

It showed, for example, that share options with fully hedged exposures to the Australian dollar, returned gains of up to 10 per cent in March.

But those without currency management typically suffered losses of more than 2 per cent in the same time.