The prudential regulator published an interim June 2014 edition of its Superannuation Fund-level Profiles and Financial Performance statistics yesterday.
Industry Super Australia (ISA) leapt on the publication’s release to highlight the two per cent gap between industry superannuation funds and retail funds during the 10 years to 30 June 2014.
The APRA statistics show that the annual net rate of return (ROR) for the industry fund sector between 30 June 2004 and 30 June 2014 was 7.45 per cent.
The ROR for retail funds during the same period was 5.46 per cent – a difference of 1.99 per cent.
ISA chief executive David Whiteley said the two per cent gap was a “real concern”, labelling the underperformance of retail funds as a “drag on member returns and national savings”.
The full set of data for superannuation funds between 30 June 2004 and 30 June 2014 is available here.
As well as publishing the statistics, APRA has also published a letter to superannuation trustees about the confidentiality of their data.
In the letter APRA lists those data points that should not be considered non-confidential “on the basis that disclosure may have adverse prudential consequences, which would outweigh any benefits of disclosure”.
For example, data related to the Vested Benefits Index and the Operational Financial Risk Requirement will be excluded from APRA publications.
“APRA will continue to apply confidentiality protection measures for industry-level publications to ensure that confidential information relating to an individual institution cannot be derived from APRA’s published statistics,” said the regulator.
A full list of the data APRA has determined non-confidential is included in an appendix to the letter to trustees, available here.
