How we invest your money

Superannuation is a long-term investment. Even when you retire, the money in your pension account continues to be invested for decades. That's why Media Super's investment options are designed to achieve long-term investment objectives to help you build your retirement savings.

What am I invested in?

We offer a range of investment options to suit members' needs throughout their lives. These options have various exposures to growth and/or defensive assets.

Our pre-mixed investment options are already diversified across a variety of asset classes to provide members with different risk profiles and return objectives to suit their needs.

Growth vs defensive assets

Investments can generally be divided into two types – growth assets and defensive assets.

Growth assets carry a higher risk but they can also deliver higher returns over the long term.

Defensive assets generally carry less risk but also deliver lower returns over the long term.

However, some assets have both growth and defensive qualities and are allocated into both categories.

Media Super's investment options have different levels of growth and defensive assets to help us achieve different risk/return profiles.

Types of assets

The risk and return profile of each investment options is determined by the percentage allocated to different types of investments.

Media Super's investment options typically include investments in the following assets:

Detailed information about asset classes is available in the Investment Guide.

Diversification

Diversification lowers risk and helps achieve more stable returns over time. Within our pre-mixed investment options, we construct a benchmark (called a Strategic Asset Allocation) to determine the optimal level of exposure to different asset classes to achieve each options' investment objective.

For example, our High Growth and Stable investment options both include Australian Shares and Cash in their Strategic Asset Allocations (as well as other asset classes) but at very different levels. The High Growth option has an allocation of 40% to Australian Shares but only 2% to Cash; the Stable option only has an allocation of 9% to Australian shares but 25% to Cash.

Detailed information about asset allocations and risk/return profiles for Media Super's investment options is available in the Investment Guide.

Who manages your money

Media Super works with a number of investment managers, allowing us to access expertise and diversify our investment holdings. Some managers may hold individual investment in a single asset class, while others may manage several separate investment in the same asset class or separate investments in multiple sectors.

Current as at 30 June 2019

Detailed information about which investment managers manage funds for each investment option, and how much, can be found in Media Super's annual reports.