AMP Limited has taken Industry Super Australia (ISA) to task for misconstruing superannuation fund performance data in submissions to the Productivity Commission (PC).
AMP has used its own submission to the PC to argue that the ISA’s use of Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA) data on 10-year returns led to inaccurate comparisons because they did not take account of the significant investment options, risk profiles and other variable investment option metrics.
The AMP submission said that despite APRA having recommended that users of the statistics use caution in their analysis and interpretation, “we are concerned that data on the APRA website is already being used incorrectly by others in the industry for super fund comparisons”.
“Conclusions drawn from incorrect analysis can have critically important negative consequences – flawed analysis and recommendations,” it said.
The AMP submission said that accurately comparing the 10-year return of the AMP Superannuation Savings Trust to the 10-year return of another superannuation fund with different investment options, risk profiles and other variable investment option metrics was “impossible and therefore meaningless”.
However it said the ISA had sought to do this.
“As we have previously stated in this submission, we believe it is inaccurate to make comparisons of 10-year returns from the APRA Annual Fund-Level Superannuation Statistics on the APRA website, when the actual default MySuper investments options have only been in operation for the last four years.
“It is not possible at this point in time to conduct any long-term net return analysis of MySuper default investment options,” the AMP submission said.
