IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/ausman/v41y2016i2p189-211.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Australian superannuation (pension) fund product ratings and performance: A guide for fund managers

Author

Listed:
  • John Watson

    (Department of Banking and Finance, Monash University, Australia)

  • James Delaney

    (Financial Analyst, Metisq Capital, Australia)

  • Michael Dempsey

    (School of Economics, Finance and Marketing, RMIT, Australia)

  • J. Wickramanayake

    (Department of Banking and Finance, Monash University, Australia)

Abstract

This paper investigates the ability of Morningstar superannuation fund ratings to predict future performance in the context of the Australian superannuation fund industry. In this context, we make provisions for fund size and fund age. We draw three broad conclusions. First, fund ratings can assist in predicting funds that are likely to significantly underperform in subsequent periods. Second, the ratings are mostly unable to distinguish between highly and moderately performing funds. Third, the likelihood of a fund being highly rated is negatively related to the size of assets under management and positively related to its age. Accordingly, the paper should be of benefit not only to fund managers seeking to identify underperforming funds, but also to fund advisers, retail investors, and trustee boards choosing SF products for investment choice menus.

Suggested Citation

  • John Watson & James Delaney & Michael Dempsey & J. Wickramanayake, 2016. "Australian superannuation (pension) fund product ratings and performance: A guide for fund managers," Australian Journal of Management, Australian School of Business, vol. 41(2), pages 189-211, May.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:ausman:v:41:y:2016:i:2:p:189-211
    DOI: 10.1177/0312896214543478
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0312896214543478
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/0312896214543478?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Paul Gerrans, 2006. "Morningstar ratings and future performance," Accounting and Finance, Accounting and Finance Association of Australia and New Zealand, vol. 46(4), pages 605-628, December.
    2. Michael C. Jensen, 1968. "The Performance Of Mutual Funds In The Period 1945–1964," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 23(2), pages 389-416, May.
    3. ., 2004. "Market dynamics associated with credit ratings: a literature review," Financial Stability Review, Banque de France, issue 4, pages 77-93, June.
    4. Hazel Bateman & Jeanette Deetlefs & Loretti I. Dobrescu & Ben R. Newell & Andreas Ortmann & Susan Thorp, 2014. "Just Interested or Getting Involved? An Analysis of Superannuation Attitudes and Actions," The Economic Record, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 90(289), pages 160-178, June.
    5. Mike Dempsey, 2009. "Rankings for Australian managed funds: Contrariness and performance index failure," Journal of Asset Management, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 10(3), pages 138-157, August.
    6. William N. Goetzmann & Nadav Peles, 1997. "Cognitive Dissonance And Mutual Fund Investors," Journal of Financial Research, Southern Finance Association;Southwestern Finance Association, vol. 20(2), pages 145-158, June.
    7. D Blake & B N Lehmann & A Timmermann, 2002. "Performance clustering and incentives in the UK pension fund industry," Journal of Asset Management, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 3(2), pages 173-194, September.
    8. Andrew Worthington, 2008. "Knowledge and Perceptions of Superannuation in Australia," Journal of Consumer Policy, Springer, vol. 31(3), pages 349-368, September.
    9. Gonzalez, F. & Haas, F. & Johannes, R. & Persson, M. & Toledo, L. & Violi, R. & Zins, C. & Wieland, M., 2004. "Market dynamics associated with credit ratings: a literature review," Financial Stability Review, Banque de France, issue 4, pages 53-76, June.
    10. Carhart, Mark M, 1997. "On Persistence in Mutual Fund Performance," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 52(1), pages 57-82, March.
    11. Gonzalez, F. & Haas, F. & Johannes, R. & Persson, M. & Toledo, L. & Violi, R. & Zins, C. & Wieland, M., 2004. "Market dynamics associated with credit ratings: a literature review," Financial Stability Review, Banque de France, issue 4, pages 53-76, June.
    12. Blake, Christopher R. & Morey, Matthew R., 2000. "Morningstar Ratings and Mutual Fund Performance," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 35(3), pages 451-483, September.
    13. M. J. Brennan, 1995. "The Individual Investor," Journal of Financial Research, Southern Finance Association;Southwestern Finance Association, vol. 18(1), pages 59-74, March.
    14. Mansor Md Isa & Lim Ching Fong, 1995. "Profile of Individual Investors in the Kelang Valley Area," Capital Markets Review, Malaysian Finance Association, vol. 3(1), pages 1-16.
    15. William N. Goetzmann & Nadav Peles, 1997. "Cognitive Dissonance And Mutual Fund Investors," Journal of Financial Research, Southern Finance Association;Southwestern Finance Association, vol. 20(2), pages 145-158, June.
    16. Fama, Eugene F. & French, Kenneth R., 1993. "Common risk factors in the returns on stocks and bonds," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 33(1), pages 3-56, February.
    17. Bateman, Hazel & Mitchell, Olivia S., 2004. "New evidence on pension plan design and administrative expenses: the Australian experience," Journal of Pension Economics and Finance, Cambridge University Press, vol. 3(1), pages 63-76, March.
    18. Sawicki, Julia & Ong, Fred, 2000. "Evaluating managed fund performance using conditional measures: Australian evidence," Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 8(3-4), pages 505-528, July.
    19. Paul Gerrans & Marilyn Clark‐Murphy & Craig Speelman, 2010. "Asset allocation and age effects in retirement savings choices," Accounting and Finance, Accounting and Finance Association of Australia and New Zealand, vol. 50(2), pages 301-319, June.
    20. Bruce N. Lehmann & Allan Timmermann, 2002. "(UBS Pensions Series 3) Performance Clustering and Incentives in the UK Pension Fund Industry," FMG Discussion Papers dp425, Financial Markets Group.
    21. Benjamin Langford & Robert Faff & Vijaya Marisetty, 2006. "On the Choice of Superannuation Funds in Australia," Journal of Financial Services Research, Springer;Western Finance Association, vol. 29(3), pages 255-279, June.
    22. Jegadeesh, Narasimhan & Titman, Sheridan, 1993. "Returns to Buying Winners and Selling Losers: Implications for Stock Market Efficiency," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 48(1), pages 65-91, March.
    23. Philip Gharghori & Charly Sujoto & Madhu Veeraraghavan, 2008. "Are Australian Investors Smart?," Australian Journal of Management, Australian School of Business, vol. 32(3), pages 525-544, March.
    24. Tim Fry & Richard Heaney & Warren McKeown, 2007. "Will investors change their superannuation fund given the choice?," Accounting and Finance, Accounting and Finance Association of Australia and New Zealand, vol. 47(2), pages 267-283, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Daniel Chiew & Judy Qiu & Sirimon Treepongkaruna & Jiping Yang & Chenxiao Shi, 2019. "The predictive ability of the expected utility-entropy based fund rating approach: A comparison investigation with Morningstar ratings in US," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 14(4), pages 1-22, April.
    2. Michael J. O'Neill & Geoffrey J. Warren, 2019. "Evaluating fund capacity: issues and methods," Accounting and Finance, Accounting and Finance Association of Australia and New Zealand, vol. 59(S1), pages 773-800, April.
    3. Michael J O’Neill & Zhangxin (Frank) Liu, 2016. "Tail risk hedging for mutual funds using equity market state prices," Australian Journal of Management, Australian School of Business, vol. 41(4), pages 687-698, November.
    4. Michael O'Neill & Gulasekaran Rajaguru, 2020. "A response surface analysis of critical values for the lead‐lag ratio with application to high frequency and non‐synchronous financial data," Accounting and Finance, Accounting and Finance Association of Australia and New Zealand, vol. 60(4), pages 3979-3990, December.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Peng, Xiaowen & Alpert, Karen & Hsu, Grace Chia-Man, 2020. "Switching between superannuation funds: Does performance and marketing matter?," Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 63(C).
    2. Sebastian Müller & Martin Weber, 2014. "Evaluating the Rating of Stiftung Warentest: How Good Are Mutual Fund Ratings and Can They Be Improved?," European Financial Management, European Financial Management Association, vol. 20(2), pages 207-235, March.
    3. Carmen Pilar Martí Ballester, 2020. "Does Concurrent Management of Mutual Funds and Pension Plans Create Conflicts of Interest?," Ensayos de Economía 18307, Universidad Nacional de Colombia Sede Medellín.
    4. Chris Bilson & Angela Frino & Richard Heaney, 2005. "Australian retail fund performance persistence," Accounting and Finance, Accounting and Finance Association of Australia and New Zealand, vol. 45(1), pages 25-42, March.
    5. Gharghori, Philip & Mudumba, Shifali & Veeraraghavan, Madhu, 2007. "How smart is money? An investigation into investor behaviour in the Australian managed fund industry," Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 15(5), pages 494-513, November.
    6. Gao, Jun & O’Sullivan, Niall & Sherman, Meadhbh, 2017. "Performance persistence in Chinese securities investment funds," Research in International Business and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 42(C), pages 1467-1477.
    7. Rob Bauer & Rogér Otten & Alireza Tourani Rad, 2006. "New Zealand mutual funds: measuring performance and persistence in performance," Accounting and Finance, Accounting and Finance Association of Australia and New Zealand, vol. 46(3), pages 347-363, September.
    8. George J. Jiang & H. Zafer Yüksel, 2019. "Sentimental mutual fund flows," The Financial Review, Eastern Finance Association, vol. 54(4), pages 709-738, November.
    9. Bauer, Rob & Otten, Roger & Rad, Alireza Tourani, 2006. "Ethical investing in Australia: Is there a financial penalty?," Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 14(1), pages 33-48, January.
    10. Jennifer Huang & Kelsey D. Wei & Hong Yan, 2022. "Investor learning and mutual fund flows," Financial Management, Financial Management Association International, vol. 51(3), pages 739-765, September.
    11. Hodula, Martin & Szabo, Milan & Bajzík, Josef, 2024. "Retail fund flows and performance: Insights from supervisory data," Emerging Markets Review, Elsevier, vol. 59(C).
    12. Dariusz Filip, 2021. "A Review of Main Strands on the Flow-Performance Relationship of Mutual Funds," Athens Journal of Business & Economics, Athens Institute for Education and Research (ATINER), vol. 7(3), pages 245-256, July.
    13. Babalos, Vassilios & Mamatzakis, Emmanuel C. & Matousek, Roman, 2015. "The performance of US equity mutual funds," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 52(C), pages 217-229.
    14. Nanda, Vikram K. & Wang, Z. Jay & Zheng, Lu, 2009. "The ABCs of mutual funds: On the introduction of multiple share classes," Journal of Financial Intermediation, Elsevier, vol. 18(3), pages 329-361, July.
    15. Massimiliano Caporin & Grégory M. Jannin & Francesco Lisi & Bertrand B. Maillet, 2014. "A Survey On The Four Families Of Performance Measures," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 28(5), pages 917-942, December.
    16. Ana C. Díaz†Mendoza & Germán López†Espinosa & Miguel A. Martínez, 2014. "The Efficiency of Performance†Based Fee Funds," European Financial Management, European Financial Management Association, vol. 20(4), pages 825-855, September.
    17. Cuthbertson, Keith & Nitzsche, Dirk & O'Sullivan, Niall, 2016. "A review of behavioural and management effects in mutual fund performance," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 44(C), pages 162-176.
    18. Babalos, Vassilios & Caporale, Guglielmo Maria & Philippas, Nikolaos, 2012. "Efficiency evaluation of Greek equity funds," Research in International Business and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 26(2), pages 317-333.
    19. Du, Ding & Huang, Zhaodan & Blanchfield, Peter J., 2009. "Do fixed income mutual fund managers have managerial skills?," The Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 49(2), pages 378-397, May.
    20. Lauren Cohen & Andrea Frazzini & Christopher Malloy, 2008. "The Small World of Investing: Board Connections and Mutual Fund Returns," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 116(5), pages 951-979, October.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Morningstar ratings; performance; superannuation funds;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • G14 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Information and Market Efficiency; Event Studies; Insider Trading
    • G23 - Financial Economics - - Financial Institutions and Services - - - Non-bank Financial Institutions; Financial Instruments; Institutional Investors

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:ausman:v:41:y:2016:i:2:p:189-211. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.agsm.edu.au .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.