What makes up a Balanced Fund?
Each super fund has a default investment option often called the Balanced Fund or My Super. These funds are made up of many different components for the benefit of people who have little interest, time, bbq tips or an investment degree to be able to choose how their money is invested.
The default fund is a generic description used by super funds, there is no industry regulation or collaboration of what constitutes a default fund. Each superannuation fund has a different allocation of assets to make up their default fund. If you want to compare default funds, then you need to look at the components making up those funds. Often the components are the same, however it’s the percentage allocations that are different. For example, Australian Super has 22% Australian shares where as UniSuper has 38%.
To make things a little trickier to understand, some funds have a growth fund and a defensive fund, they then carve up a combo of the two to create their balanced fund.
The table below displays just a sample of default funds to demonstrate how diverse the default fund options are.
| Balanced Fund Options | Australian Super | Australian Ethical | UniSuper | Cbus Super |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Australian Shares | 22% | 28% | 38% | 20.5% |
| International Shares | 33% | 22% | 22% | 24% |
| Property | 7% | 10% | 5% | 13% |
| Fixed Interest & Cash | 15% | 30% | 30% | 11% |
| Infrastructure | 13% | 5% | 13% | |
| Other Asset Classes (Equity strategies, Private equity, Agricultural and Credit, Emerging Markets,Mid RiskAlternatives) | 10% | 10% | 18.5% | |
| Total | 100% | 100% | 100% | 100% |
SFF
* Please check fund websites for up to date data.