How to Compare Super Funds | Top 5 Australian Super Funds review - YouTube

hello everyone welcome to my channel my  name is Irene I hope everyone is doing well  

today i want to share my not so good experience  with my current super fund and the lessons  

that I learned from a mistake and I'll walk you  through to my comparison process of the top five  

super funds rated by Canstar now let's get started  alright our current super fund is with mlc which  

used to be nab subsidiary until january 2020 and  we were set up with the meeting by nab's financial  

advisor and later on she successfully persuaded us  to switch our super from host plus which is a much  

better fund to mlc and after that we had meetings  with her semi-annually for a year all she did was  

talking up mlc's super and is insurance look  at the graph your super balance has grown a lot  

but seriously without a benchmark for reference  it's all nonsense talking as long as we realize  

it's completely useless to pay someone who  does nothing but selling their products  

we cancel her service and stop seeing her but even  now i still receive the statements indicating that  

if you have any questions please contact your  financial advisor abc which is incredible  

two months ago i logged into my mlc account and  i found that i couldn't see my insurance cover  

so i called the customer service and i turned out  to be mlc super and mlc interests are different  

companies now and i was like shouldn't they notify  us in the first place what's worse is that i don't  

even know how i can log into the other website  to see my insurance cover and apparently you need  

to call the customer service and to get your  customer number which by the way is not shown  

in any statements whatsoever so looking back the  whole matter we definitely have fell into a sales  

trap and here are the lessons that i learned from  my mistake and i hope you don't make the saying  

the first lesson that i learned is don't fall  for the professional title the financial advisor  

sounds very glamorous and professional but this  title doesn't necessarily guarantee that they will  

do the ethical deeds for your best interest  in january 2020 a law firm launched a class  

actions lawsuit against national australia bank  for delaying the move of 6.3 billion belonging to  

more than 330 000 super customers a decision that  allowed the big four banks financial advices to  

continue to charge lucrative fees and nab is just  one of them recently you may have realized this  

kind of shocking headlines of the big four banks  in australia increase in frequency the reason for  

this is the government has initiated a formal  independent public inquiry the royal commission  

into the misconduct in banking superannuation  financial services industry obviously the  

main drive for the big four is the profit and the  advice provided by the financial advisor could be  

heavily biased by their monetary incentives  such as the sales target or commission  

which makes the advice not 100 general for my  case i shouldn't have trusted her that much  

and the second mistake that i made is that i  didn't dare to say no you probably have the  

similar experience when a salesperson is trying  to say something and you just couldn't say no  

so i didn't say no to her even that i realized  what she was talking about was all mlc products  

so don't be afraid to say no when you realize what  you're paying for it doesn't bring you any value  

and i should blame my listeners i should have done  more research by myself it's shocking to see how  

it is rated by the real customers and things like  many things thieves and weak financial planners  

unfortunately i can't read at zero star which is  still too much and also it takes me too long to  

get out of it so listen learn and time to move on  to another super fund and i started my research  

by using the resources like cancer morningstar  product review and individual superfund website  

and during my process i found that there are  five main types of super funds from corporate  

super funds public sector super funds retail super  funds and industry super funds and self-managed  

super funds retail super funds are generally  managed by the banks or insurance companies  

or wealth management companies industry super  funds were originally started by trade union or  

employee associations but nowadays most of them  are open to the public except some are still  

linked to a particular sector such as the uni  super is for those who work in the university  

or research sector the main difference between  retail and industry super funds is how they manage  

their profits retail super funds generally  return the profits to the shareholders and  

investors well industry super funds return  their profits to their members which makes  

industry super funds historically provide higher  benefits to their members after taxes and fees  

so i took the top five super funds that rated  by cancer and then i compared their fees their  

investment options their five-year investment  performance and their reputation and service level  

by the customer reviews and insurance options and  the five super funds that i'm going to compare  

are host plus australian super sun super big  super and q super now let me show you what i found  

let's compare the fees first which is the  most tricky part and the most important part  

imagine you and your employee inject money  monthly to your super hoping that it can help  

you to build your wealth as soon as possible and  it turned out to be the principle and the return  

just get eaten by a admin fees investment fees  and transaction fees all different social fees  

that stated in the tiny little words in the  policy so i try to dig as much as i can but  

feel free to comment if i miss anything the major  fees normally include admin fee which is a fixed  

number for all different investment options and  the investment fee the portfolio that needs more  

active management will charge a higher fee and  different fees like indirect cost ratio and other  

fees will be charged by different super phones  i give the phone that charge the highest fee a  

one point and the cheapest fund gives you the  five points it looks like the q super charges  

the lowest fee for the 50 000 super balance  next i test out the investment performance  

for the five-year investment horizon because the  idea is not to switch from super to another super  

so my investment horizon with one super is at  least five years onwards it looks like the stamp  

super outperformed the rest of the four super  funds on the balanced option so i'll give you  

the five points now let's look at their investment  options hostplus offers five different investment  

options and the first four options gives you  different levels of control so they've got the  

premix which they have already made the package  with the fixed percentage in different asset  

classes the second investment option that allows  you to determine the percentage of different asset  

classes in your portfolio if you want more control  you can choose the individual manager investment  

option you can choose the fund manager either from  macquarie to blackrock or if you want completely  

control that you want to buy and sell some  individual stocks you can choose the choice plus  

investment option which literally that you can do  a real-time trading for the companies in axx 300  

and now let's look at the australian super so it  looks like it offers a similar tiers of options  

with host plus they offer the premix the diy mix  and the member direct which is similar to hostplus  

choice plus investment option the only option  that they don't have to choose your font manager  

which hostpass have so for this particular reason  i'll give australian super a four points and host  

plus a five points now let's look at the sun  super sunsuper offers 19 investment options by  

two main categories they got the multi asset and  the single asset obviously multi assets allows you  

to invest in the fund that is a mix of different  asset classes from stocks to cash to fixed income  

and other asset classes and the single asset  allows you to invest in a particular asset  

class compared to the above three super funds big  supers investment options are simpler they only  

have nine different investment options from mixed  up with sort of multi assets and single asset  

options let's see the q super q super has four  different investment options from lifetime  

qsuper this lifetime option instead of to let you  to choose how aggressive you want your investment  

portfolio to be so they automatically will set  up and packaged up a asset class with different  

percentage based on your age and your super  balance which is very interesting and they  

have the diversify options of course is the  multi assets and the single sector options  

from different from cash to bonds fixed income and  international shares and austrian issues and of  

course the self investor is similar options as the  hostplus choice plus and australian super option i  

give different scores based on how extensive the  investment options are from different super funds  

but to be honest if you are given too many  options you probably just ended up with  

the default option the balance option to me how  extensive the options are is probably not a big  

deal as long as i can find investment options that  fits to my investment goals and my risk tolerance  

with the lowest fees possible i'll be happy now  let's look at the customer reviews i'm i'm always  

fascinated to see the detailed bad experience from  the real customers about their super funds and i  

believe people wouldn't take the time to write the  long stories to warn the prospective customers to  

stay away from them so it's a good reference  if you want to compare not only super funds  

but other goods and services before you buy them  from websites like product review so out of the  

five super funds that they tested the transparency  customer service rates and fees so i give the  

highest points to the highest rated which is the  big super and the next one i give four to the sun  

super and three points to q super and two to house  plus and one to australian super many low rating  

reviews mentioned that how difficult that they  claim from certain insurance and income production  

is mostly mentioned one and the premium of the  insurance is a big lump sum outflow from your  

super now let's look at the insurance normally  that you will have the life insurance the tpd  

insurance and the income protection issues these  are the three main insurance that you will need  

and some super they will offer other extensive  options such as the host plus has special life  

events insurance and the parental premium waiver  and personal super plan insurance so here i  

only give different marks based on their how  extensive their options are so it looks like  

host plus has the most extensive options all  the other four super funds they either have  

life insurance or life and tpd combined insurance  and all of the fine super offers income protection  

for my case we have live and tpd insurance  and income protection with mlc and we will  

probably stick with these basic plans to the next  super and people will ask what is the sort of  

guideline of how much we should be covered the  reference guideline from the barefoot investor  

is 12 times of your annual pay for the tpd and  live combined insurance and 75 of your pay as  

your income protection now let's have a look at  what points i gave based on the five criterias  

and it looks like the cube super has 18 points  which is the highest but the points are just  

going to give me a reference point because there  are actually two bugs of my comparison method one  

it is based on a 50 000 balance on a default  investment option which is the balanced option  

normally 70 on stocks and 30 on the cash facing  kind of other essay classes so it may not be the  

investment option that is you're looking for the  second bug of my comparison method is that i gave  

each criteria equal weight which makes the total  sum scores not accurate for me it's all about to  

grow my super as big as it can be so there are  two factors one is the inflows so which are the  

employees contribution and your contribution and  the investment options performance and the outflow  

is the fees so what i'm looking for here is to  find a gross fund that offers a lowest cost as  

possible because i don't want my phone to pay  any farm managers expensive meals and wines 35  

year olds has 50 000 in a fund and contributes 5  000 a year over 30 years with average return of 8  

a fund that charges 1 a year in fees and they  found charges 0.02 fee would have wait for it 226  

000 difference in the super balance in 30 years  that's a lot of money so the bottom line is that  

you need to find a investment option that  suits for your age your risk tolerance and  

your investment goal with the lowest fees possible  so i'll put a comparison chart because different  

investment options charge it differently on my  patreon page and hopefully if you don't have time  

to check the pds the policy disclosure statements  that chat will help you so what super funds are  

you currently with and are you happy with it  please leave a comment about any experience  

good and bad because i like to know well thanks  so much for watching i'll see you next week bye