Industry Super Australia today launched Funding Australia: Superannuation and the Financial System, a groundbreaking study that charts the course of super’s rise and rise over the last twenty years.
Click here to read this on the Industry Super Australia website
Underpinned by new and innovative analysis, the paper comprehensively illustrates the quantum of superannuation’s contribution to the Australian economy.
ISA Chief Executive David Whiteley released the report in Melbourne today to a briefing of industry CEOs.
“The report shows beyond any doubt at all that super has properly ‘grown up’ into a key participant in the Australian national economic discussion.
“The quiet evolution over the past decade has laid the foundations for what will ultimately be a significant shift in how Australia’s future economy will be funded after the mining investment boom.
“It is now time for a discussion with policy makers, the finance sector and the community about how super can continue to deliver to members and drive the economy for the decades to come.
“With superannuation predicted to exceed the financial assets of banking within two decades, super will increasingly operate along-side the banks to provide funding for infrastructure projects, new ventures and expansion of existing companies, enhancing competition, increasing efficiency, and reducing systemic risk.
“A key finding of this report is that if we can get the public policy settings right to underpin the expansion, super’s potential really is endless.”
Key findings of the report include:
- The current pool of $1.8 trillion dollars is on-track to reach $7 trillion by 2030.
- Superannuation is one of the top five pools of retirement savings in the world.
- Super is already providing over $70 billion in retirement benefits each year – double that of the aged pension.
- Super has generated around $1 trillion in domestic savings that otherwise would not have been available for investment.Over the period 2003 to 2014, superannuation contributed an estimated total of $201 billion to Australia’s capital stock.
- Just last year, the super system invested an aggregate of about $30 billion in infrastructure, private equity, and direct property.
- Super’s $11 billion stake underpins the commercial property market, with a 140 per cent increase over the last decade.
- Super now accounts for two out of every three Australian dollars sourced by private equity for investment.
- Super has a direct link to our improving credit ratings and has enabled savings of an estimated $6 billion a year in interest payments.
- Capital deepening – investments that enable greater economic output, like major office blocks, ports or airports- are responsible for over half of Australia’s recent productivity growth.
- 21% of Industry SuperFund assets are invested in our ports, airports, roads, electricity generation, property and other alternative assets that keep the wheels of the economy moving.
Download the report [File size 1,214 KB]
Click here to read this on the Industry Super Australia website