How your super is invested can have a big impact on how much you may have in retirement. That’s why it's important to look at the long-term performance of your investments to help grow your super.
Our scale and size mean we can invest in a broad range of local, national and global investment opportunities, with our team of investment experts focusing on delivering strong and competitive investment returns over the long term, working hard to navigate changing markets and keep members’ retirement savings on track.
How we invest your super
At Australian Retirement Trust, you have flexibility to choose from a range of investment options, however if you don’t make an investment choice, we’ll invest your super in our MySuper investment option – the Lifecycle Investment Strategy.
In the Lifecycle Investment Strategy, if you’re under 50 years of age, we invest your super in the High Growth Pool. The High Growth Pool has identical objectives, risk labels and asset allocations as our award-winning High Growth option. The High Growth Pool has a growth asset ratio of around 85% - shares are an example of a growth asset.
Our High Growth Pool delivered a 9.49% p.a. return over the past 10 years to 30 September 2024.1
Super is a long-term investment
Investment strategies that aim for the highest returns on your money generally have the highest risk of ups and downs in the short term. Strategies with lower returns are generally lower risk. So, there’s a risk and return trade-off:
- High-growth assets have the potential to deliver strong medium- to long-term returns. The trade-off is that they carry a higher risk of short-term losses.
- Defensive assets have a lower chance of making losses. The trade-off is that they generally deliver lower returns, sometimes not even enough to keep up with inflation. Cash is an example of a defensive asset.
Super is a long-term investment and generally speaking, you can’t access your super until you reach your preservation age, which for most people is now 60 years of age. Those under 50 in particular have the opportunity ride out the ups and downs of the market, smoothing out returns over the long-term, and generally producing higher returns.
What happens when you turn 50?
In Australian Retirement Trust’s Super Savings Lifecycle Investment Strategy, we’ll invest 100% of your account balance in the High Growth Pool until you turn 50.
Following your 50th birthday, your balance will move gradually out of the High Growth Pool into the Balanced and Cash Pools, as shown in the following graph.
By your 60th birthday, your balance will be invested in a combination of the Balanced and Cash Pools. The proportion allocated to the Cash Pool will then gradually increase as you approach age 65. This strategy reduces investment risk as you approach retirement.
Indicative image only. Read the Super Savings Investment Guide available on your employer microsite for full details of how the Lifecycle Investment Strategy works.
Invest your super to meet your goals
If you prefer to choose your investment options, you can invest in our new streamlined suite of Choice investment options. On 1 July 2024, we released 15 new carefully constructed Choice investment options that cover a broad range of objectives and investment timeframes to meet your goals and life stages.
Before you make any changes, consider your unique retirement goals and financial needs when working out which investment option might be right for you. When you invest your super, you should consider:
- your investment timeframe
- the level of returns you want
- how much risk you’re willing to take.
All investments carry risk. This means there’s a risk that the value of your investments might go down as well as up. Generally, the longer you have before you want to start using your super, the more you might choose to consider investing in higher-growth, higher-risk options. This is because you may be wanting to grow your money as much as you can over the long term. And this might matter to you more than any short-term falls or fluctuations.
But if you’re close to being eligible to access your super, you may choose to invest more conservatively. This is because you might want to help protect your retirement savings from any short-term losses.
Learn about ART’s investment options
1. The High Growth Pool commenced on 1 July 2024 and has identical investments to the High Growth option. To show the returns for the High Growth Pool, we have shown the returns of the High Growth option to 1 July 2024, and the returns of the High Growth Pool from 1 July 2024. The High Growth option commenced on 28 February 2022 and adopted the investment strategy of the pre-merger Sunsuper Growth option.