Our super and pension fund comparison tools show how each investment option ranks against similar options for fees and for investment performance. The data is licensed from super research company Chant West.
Both sets of rankings work the same way. Investment options are grouped into five risk categories, and within each category every option is given a ranking from 1 to 4, called a quartile. This guide explains how the categories and quartiles work, what the fee and performance rankings measure, and what they don’t cover.
The five risk categories
Chant West groups super and pension investment options into five risk categories, based on how much of each option is invested in growth assets. Both the fee rankings and the performance rankings compare an option only with other options in the same category.
| All growth | 96-100% growth assets |
| High growth | 81-95% growth assets |
| Growth | 61-80% growth assets |
| Balanced | 41-60% growth assets |
| Conservative | 21-40% growth assets |
Retirement planning isn’t the same for everyone.
Take our 2-minute quiz to find out which stage you’re at and what you could focus on next.
What is a quartile?
We use quartiles for both fees and performance. For performance, a 1 means the option’s returns were in the top 25% of its risk category. For fees, a 1 means its fees were among the lowest 25%. In both cases, 1 is the strongest result in the category and 4 is the weakest.
Quartiles divide a range of data points into four roughly equal groups which can then be ranked according to their performance.
For example there may be 40 investment options that are all categorised as Balanced. The performance of these investment options is then analysed over various periods from three months to 15 years.
For each time period the 40 investment options are then divided into four groups of 10. The 10 investment options that have the highest performance are ranked in quartile 1. The 10 investment options that have the next highest performance are ranked in quartile 2. The following 10 are ranked in quartile 3 and the bottom 10 are in quartile 4.
As an example, below is a fictional set of results for one category over 15 years. The results are ordered by return, and you can see that the first four funds are in quartile 1 because they have the best results, the next four are in quartile 2, and so on.
| Fund and investment option | Return | Quartile |
|---|---|---|
| Fund H | 5.2% | 1 |
| Fund B | 5.0% | 1 |
| Fund L | 4.8% | 1 |
| Fund D | 4.7% | 1 |
| Fund O | 4.5% | 2 |
| Fund F | 4.4% | 2 |
| Fund N | 4.4% | 2 |
| Fund E | 4.4% | 2 |
| Fund J | 4.3% | 3 |
| Fund A | 4.3% | 3 |
| Fund M | 4.2% | 3 |
| Fund I | 4.1% | 3 |
| Fund P | 4.0% | 4 |
| Fund K | 4.0% | 4 |
| Fund C | 3.7% | 4 |
| Fund G | 3.7% | 4 |
How the fee rankings work
The fee rankings come from Chant West’s Super Fund Fee Survey. For each investment option, Chant West works out the total annual fees and costs a member would pay at two account balances, $50,000 and $500,000. Each option is then ranked against the other options in its risk category at each balance.
The total includes administration fees and costs, investment fees and costs (including any performance fees, averaged over five years) and transaction costs. It doesn’t include fees that depend on what you do, such as buy-sell spreads and switching fees, or insurance premiums and advice fees.
Chant West adjusts some funds’ published fees so that every fund is compared on the same basis, for example where a fund shows its fees after tax. This means the fees behind the rankings may differ slightly from those in a fund’s product disclosure statement (PDS).
We compare fees at two balances because many funds charge part of their administration fee as a fixed dollar amount, and some cap the percentage-based part. A fixed dollar fee makes up a bigger share of a $50,000 balance than of a $500,000 balance, so the percentage you pay usually falls as your balance rises. Investment fees, on the other hand, are a percentage of your balance and stay the same whatever its size. As a result, an option can rank differently at the two balances.
The $50,000 balance is the one funds must use in the fee example in their PDS. The $500,000 balance shows how fees compare for larger balances.
For example, fictional Option A charges a fixed fee of $78 a year plus 0.50% of your balance. Option B has no fixed fee and charges 0.60% of your balance. At $50,000, Option A costs $328 a year and Option B costs $300, so Option B is cheaper. At $500,000, Option A costs $2,578 and Option B costs $3,000, so Option A is cheaper.
Total annual fees for two fictional options
Source: SuperGuide calculations. Illustrative example only.
Our fee rankings use only Chant West’s rankings within the five risk categories. Index (passive) options and lifecycle options, which change their investment mix as members get older, generally aren’t included in those rankings, so they don’t have a fee ranking. Our guides to the super funds and pension funds with the lowest fees include index options in their lists of the 20 cheapest options overall.
How the performance rankings work
Have you ever looked at your super fund’s investment returns and thought “that looks pretty good” or “that’s disappointing”, and wondered how your fund compares with similar funds? Is it a consistently high performer or an inveterate underachiever?
The performance rankings help you answer those questions. Each option’s returns are ranked against the other options in its risk category over eight time periods:
- 3 months
- Financial year to date
- 1 year
- 3 years
- 5 years
- 7 years
- 10 years
- 15 years
For each of these time periods you can see which quartile an investment option ranked in:
| Quartile 1 | Top 25% |
| Quartile 2 | Next 25% |
| Quartile 3 | Following 25% |
| Quartile 4 | Bottom 25% |
N/A means a ranking isn’t available for that period.
What the rankings cover
Chant West is a research company that has been analysing super fund performance for more than 20 years. It is part of Zenith Investment Partners and provides research and analysis to super funds and employers.
The performance rankings come from Chant West’s Multi-Manager (Performance) Survey, which includes all major super funds. They include MySuper default options that are available as choice options as well as other choice options. They exclude lifestage investment options where members remain in the one investment option for the remainder of their membership, such as options named after the years in which members were born.
The fee rankings come from a separate Chant West survey. The two surveys don’t cover exactly the same investment options, so some options in our tools have only a fee ranking or only a performance ranking. Options with neither ranking aren’t included in the tools.
Why use quartiles?
By using quartiles, it allows you to see how your fund is performing in relation to all the investment options in the same risk category, without focusing on an isolated percentage return figure out of context, which can be misleading.
For example, you may find that after several years of strong returns your fund suddenly reports a negative return. You panic and wonder if you should switch to a better-performing fund. Then you check your fund’s quartile ranking and find that despite reporting a negative return it ranked in the top quartile. This reassures you that all investment options are experiencing difficult market conditions and that your fund is responding better than most.
Or your fund may have been reporting positive annual returns, but you begin to question if it is performing as well as it should. You check its quartile performance and see that it has been consistently ranked in quartiles 3 and 4, below the median for its category. In this case, it may be worth doing further research to find the cause. Is it asset selection, high fees or some other issue?
If you find that your fund is a consistently poor performer for its risk category, you might consider switching funds. But you should only consider doing this after researching and comparing a number of super funds, not just on performance but also on offerings such as fees, insurance, advice and other member services.
Think long-term
It’s important to remember that super is a marathon not a sprint, so consistent high performance over the long run is what matters. If your fund’s ranking slipped over the past three months or year but is in the top two quartiles over periods of five to 15 years, for example, then it may be worth keeping an eye on the situation and doing a bit of digging into the cause. However, it is never a good idea to switch funds based solely on short-term performance.
Compare super and pension funds
Use our super fund comparison tool to see the fee and performance rankings for super investment options.
Use our pension fund comparison tool to see the same rankings for pension investment options.
Get more guides like this with a free account
Get independent guidance and practical tools to help you make
better super and retirement decisions.