Investments

Good evening and welcome. Welcome to the 2024-25 EOFY Performance Update Webinar. The content of today's webinar has been created based on the questions that you the members have pre-submitted. We received hundreds of questions, wanting to know more about the investment market, the outlook, long-term economic themes and how these factors come into play with AustralianSuper's investment strategy.

If we go back 40 years, 40 years ago, Queen had just delivered a show stealing performance at Live Aid. ‘We don't need another hero’ was the number one song in Australia by Tina Turner. The variable home loan rate was 12.5%. The Titanic was found. Neighbours premiered on Australian TV and a compulsory employer paid super contribution of 3% had only just begun and only in some professions. And some of you watching, joining us this evening may have still been at school, or some of you may not have been born.

40 years ago, AustralianSuper, albeit under a different name, came into existence. And since then, it has provided most of our members, those in the Balanced option with an average investment return of 9.28%. Over those 40 years, there's been some ups and downs, and today we going to look at how the Balanced option achieved 9.52% for the 24-25 financial year.

My name is Peter Treseder. I'm an Education Manager at AustralianSuper and 40 years ago I was three years into my superannuation career. For the past 26 years, I've been with AustralianSuper, helping members understand the super system better so that they can be in a better financial position when they retire.

AustralianSuper acknowledges the Traditional Custodians of Country throughout Australia and their connection to land, sea and community. We pay our respects to Elders past, present and emerging and we extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. Today's speakers, we are on the land of the Bunurong, Wurundjeri and Kombumerri people. And AustralianSuper head office is on the land of the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation.

What we're talking about tonight is general information only. It does not take into account your personal objectives, or your financial situation or needs. So please read the Product Disclosure Statement and Target Market Determination, available on AustralianSuper’s website, or by calling 1300 300 273 before you make any decisions.

These webinars have become increasingly popular, with thousands of members registering to attend. We prepared responses to many of those questions raised, however if we don't get to your question today, we do have a number of resources available to you to explore after the session.

To help me with this evening's webinar, I have with me two senior members of our investment team Sam Weaner, Manager Investment Communications, and Amber Rabinov, Head of Thematic Research.

So firstly to you, Sam. Thank you and welcome tonight. What do you remember from 40 years ago? Thank you, Peter. And when I look back to 40 years ago, I think of Michael J. Fox in the Back to the Future movies. But in terms of finance, I remember the 1980s being a time of a lot of mergers and acquisitions among companies. As well, investing was becoming more mainstream. I remember having school assignments where we got to pick investments to choose from and stocks to invest in.

And Amber the same question to you. 40 years ago, what memories come back? I wouldn't say necessarily memories, but 40 years ago, this was a period of real significant change in the global economy. Particularly in terms of freeing up or liberalising the rules around trade, around finance, and also foreign exchange markets. So as an Australian economist, this was a big time, and a really big event in this country was the incredibly formative for me in my professional career, was the floating of the Aussie dollar back in December 1983.

Thanks Amber. Now Sam, I mentioned before the Balanced option has averaged 9.28% over its 40 years. Can you expand on those, what those numbers were year by year? Because they did vary. I've always been a bit of a historian, so it is interesting to look at the last 40 years and the trends that have occurred over that time frame. This chart shows the financial year returns of the Balanced option, and the first aspect that I notice is that there are a lot more good years with positive returns than negative returns over this time frame. So we often tend to dwell on the on the negative years. We think of the times when international shares sort of sold off in the early 2000s. We think of the Global Financial Crisis in 2008, 2009 and even the recent COVID-19 downturn in 2020. However, history has demonstrated the resilience of many diversified portfolios over this time frame.

And like the last 40 years, the last 12 months has had good days, weeks and months. Looking back with the wonder of hindsight, how did the 24-25 financial year pan out for the Balanced option? And when you look at the returns over the last financial year, it does show a window into the daily volatility that can occur. So this is the cumulative return of the Balanced option. This shows that it has provided a solid result of 9.52% over the year, even while facing the ups and downs. So for example, if you look back at the beginning of the year, a year ago, in August, the markets faced higher Federal Reserve rates in the US. There was weaker tech sector earnings at the time.

And there's even a lot of geopolitical tensions. But then markets continued to advance through February. And in February is when we saw a lot of concerns about US trade policies. And this led to major sell offs in shares. And when a lot of those tariffs were put on hold in April, that's when the markets quickly recovered through the end of the year, providing a solid result for members in the Balanced option. Effectively, a member that stayed invested through these ups and downs received a pretty decent return for the year.

Yeah, and it's important that the return for the year outpaces inflation so that we have real growth on our earnings. How did the performance of the Balanced option compare to its objective to outpace inflation? I find as I get older, I often think of the different prices from things, years ago to what items cost today. And you think 20 years ago a movie ticket would cost about $15, today it could cost $25 to $30. And this is a result of that inflation rate, or CPI, of 2.7% over 20 years. And this is why each of the PreMixed options have an objective to outperform inflation by a certain threshold.

And for the Balanced option, what we show on the screen here, that's CPI plus 4% per year. So to do this the Balanced option invests in a lot of growth assets such as Australian shares, international shares and private equity to help provide these long-term returns. Real assets in the portfolio assets like infrastructure and property can also provide some protection against inflation as many of their revenues are linked to either CPI or economic growth. Overall, when you're investing for retirement, inflation is an important factor to consider. You want to maintain your purchasing power by investing in a way that outperforms inflation. And this can help you live well in retirement.

So Amber I appreciate we're talking about the last 12 months, which in a superannuation lifetime is short-term. And I'm always talking to members about the need to take a long-term view of super. But how does the fund actively manage investments in the short term?

That's right Peter, it’s certainly not a set and forget approach that we take. Rather, we actively manage investments, as you say. We take into consideration material changes in the current market conditions as well as in the outlook. We also have some more nimble parts of the portfolio in highly liquid listed markets, where we can take advantage of some of the more opportunistic investments when they arise.

So if we think back over the past 12 months, we've broadly maintained a growth bias in the asset allocation. And importantly, we stayed invested through the Liberation Day shock around tariffs that Sam mentioned. We did this to benefit from the snap back in equity prices that rapidly occurred afterwards. What does a growth bias mean to us? What this means is we place a greater weighting in our asset allocation, or the proportion of the portfolio that we hold in assets like international shares, Australian shares and private equity. And these assets tend to generate stronger returns over time compared to asset classes like cash and fixed income.

Now Sam, I said before that the content of today has been put together from pre-submitted member questions and this refers to AustralianSuper’s performance over the last 12 months. The question was ‘AustralianSuper doesn't appear in the top ten performing super funds for 2025. Can you provide some insights into how we perform against our peers?’

In addition to the CPI objective, we also do have a peer objective, and this is to outperform the median fund or our peers. And the Super Ratings benchmark provides a group of peers for us to compare against. And effectively the Balanced option aims to outperform the median Balanced fund over the medium to longer term. And this is where we have been successful over five, ten, 15 and 20 years due to our active management approach, as well as investing in unlisted assets like private equity and infrastructure that have added value for members accounts over time.

But to get to the heart of the question, it's really looking at the one-year number. So in the short term, over one year, we did face some challenges compared to our peers, largely due to investment style. A key aspect has been the outperformance of listed markets over unlisted markets in recent times. And so any peer fund that was primarily invested in listed assets performed fairly well and did better in the surveys over the past year. For any funds that had a mix of listed assets and unlisted assets we’re a bit farther down the list. So this is one of the challenges that we faced over this past year. So we do see a big difference between investment strategies that have done well over the long term, say 10, 15, 20 years compared to investment strategies that did well over the recent period.

And on the next slide, we're going to do a deeper dive into the performance of different asset classes in the portfolio. And that's where a question has come from members on this topic. Sam, ‘can you please comment on the performance of these asset classes within the Balanced investment mix? Now we understand some of these might be commercially sensitive, but would help to understand at the high level how they performed and what adjustments we proposed to their allocation and what role you see for them in the near medium term.’

Definitely, so you can think of the asset classes in the portfolio as the building blocks of your portfolio, and these are returns that we do want to share with members that these are the building blocks that make up, the High Growth option, the Balanced option, the Conservative option and the Stable option. And this chart shows the returns of each of those asset classes in the AustralianSuper portfolio over one year and also over five years, as well as ten years.

So it demonstrates how asset classes such as Australian shares international shares, private equity and even infrastructure have provided significant contributions to members accounts over the past decade. Strong consumer demand has led to favourable earnings growth in many assets, which drove these returns over time.

It's also worth highlighting asset classes like unlisted property. And this is an asset class that historically has been a strong performer in Australia. If you go back to the last three decades, returns up to the year 2020 were pretty favourable for property. Just in the last five years, we've been seeing big shifts in demand for retail and office properties that affected the returns in this asset class. So one benefit of diversification by having these different building blocks is that each asset class is affected in a different way by market and economic conditions, and provides a balance between long-term growth potential as well as some downside risk protection.

So ultimately, what we see is that asset class returns can often go in cycles. And these can be driven by different economic themes over time. So that's an interesting point you bring up there Sam, about themes and asset cycles. So if I turn to you Amber, in your role leading the thematic research, what do you see as being the key driver of the current market cycle?

So Peter, from a cyclical perspective regarding asset returns, there are two real key components. Firstly, we've got the traditional macro drivers such as growth, inflation and interest rates. And then we have the more thematic drivers. And for both of these they can be global as well as more local or national influences. If we think back to recent history on the macro front, the low interest rate environment, particularly from the mid 2010s and into the early 2020s, this was really positive for high risk, growth oriented assets such as private equity and listed equities. And these asset classes in turn enjoyed really high returns.

On the thematic front, we can think back to China's infrastructure and construction boom, particularly from the mid 2000s and into the early 2010s, which drove a global boom in resources. And this, in turn, led to outperformance by mining companies in the broader Australian equity market. Likewise, we've seen housing booms in Australia, the US and elsewhere during the 2000s supporting banking and construction stocks. So if we fast forward to today thinking about these factors, whilst interest rates are higher than they were, say, ten years ago, they are on a downward trajectory as inflation pressures have eased from their COVID peaks.

Further, when we turn to the key thematic driver of the market, this is really handed over to the tech disruption of large-scale artificial intelligence and the capital expenditure, or CapEx boom that this has inspired. And you can really see this playing out in the listed equity space, particularly in the US, where the major tech companies are domiciled. Here we're talking about the Magnificent 7 or ‘Mag 7’ tech stocks. And this has been a really important reason why international equities have performed so strongly this year that we saw on the previous slide.

So we've talked about different asset classes. What about the difference between listed and unlisted assets. We had many questions around this topic. One member asking ‘I'd like to know how AustralianSuper's unlisted assets are performing and what are the plans for investing in these for the future?’

Thank you Peter. When you look at the unlisted assets in the portfolio, these include asset classes like private equity, infrastructure, property, as well as credit. And they all have unique characteristics that provide that potential for higher returns compared to their listed equivalents and shares or fixed interest. So unlisted assets often have longer time horizons, more complexity, and less liquidity than listed assets. A benefit of AustralianSuper’s size, our scale, even our investment expertise is that we can invest in a large part of these assets on behalf of members.

Currently, about 25% of the portfolio is invested in unlisted assets, and we continue to look for additional opportunities to diversify the portfolio. Unlisted assets also can capitalise on many of those economic themes that Amber’s team researches. Assets like data centres and towers can capitalise on things like the digital theme, where renewable energy assets can benefit from decarbonisation trends over time.

Thanks, Sam. So we’ve had a fairly high-level view of how AustralianSuper invests and what assets they invest in. If you'd like to know more about what AustralianSuper invests in you can go to australiansuper.com/investments/what-we-invest-in And there you can see a detailed listing of the investments that the fund owns and how they are spread across the different asset sectors. that Sam has spoken about.

Now Amber, Sam spoke about the asset classes being the building blocks of a portfolio, how does the fund choose which building blocks to use and in what quantities? As one member has asked, ‘How do you determine the allocation to each of the investment sectors?’

That's a great question. Look, as you would expect, there are a number of factors that we need to take into consideration when we consider what investment sectors or asset classes are best for us to invest into, to put us in the best position to achieve our inflation plus 4% return objective over that longer-term period. Now firstly, we'd like to take advantage of probably the only free lunch available investing – that's diversification. And what this means is that we invest in a range of assets that perform differently in different environments, to give the fund a higher risk adjusted return than we could achieve by say, investing in only 1 or 2 asset classes. This is really important given the uncertainty of future outcomes.

Look honestly, we just don't know for sure how markets are ultimately going to play out. So this strategy allows us to spread our investment over international and Australian shares, private equity, those real assets such as property and infrastructure, credit, fixed income and cash, as you can see in the figure on your screen. We can then do a lot of research into the outlook for the global economy and also financial markets and into asset valuations. While we don't know how the future is going to evolve, what we can do is assess current conditions and what factors may influence conditions evolving either in a positive or a negative manner. And this allows us to apply further judgment to how we wish to weight our asset allocation according to growth assets versus defensive assets, for instance.

So what would be an example of that approach?

So if for say the economic outlook is positive, inflation and interest rates are falling, employment and economic growth are relatively healthy. And let's say valuations of share prices are judged to be affordable based on history or are rising on a justifiable basis, given earnings outcomes. In that sort of scenario, we would be more inclined to skew our holdings more towards those assets which have tended to do well in similar circumstances in the past. So these more growth oriented assets, such as Australian or international shares or private equity.

To give an opposite example, if say valuations were judged to be expensive after a long period of successive growth in a slowing economy with rising inflation, then we would be more likely to scale back exposures to growth assets and increase allocations to cash and fixed income. Taking a more defensive stance in holding these asset classes. Ultimately, our asset allocation strategy can be seen on a spectrum, and we use judgment to scale these positions accordingly, depending upon say, the market environment and expectations about the outlook.

Buying and selling assets based on these factors I’ve discussed, as well as price movements of these assets, changes the size of the asset allocation pie chunks. One pertinent example that we can see is the small allocation that we have in property. Now Sam spoke earlier about the slower growth in property asset returns over the past five years relative to the other asset classes. And in fact our allocation in property’s actually shrunk over the past few years. And this is because of the less constructive outlook for property relative to the other asset classes like shares or even infrastructure.

Thanks, Amber. So Sam, AustralianSuper is what's called an active manager, what does that mean?

At AustralianSuper we use active management to seek to add value to members accounts, and we do that in two ways. First is asset allocation, and that's what Amber discussed on how we adjust the allocation of the PreMixed options over time.

The second part is security selection. So security selection is where we would want to choose which assets have the potential to outperform the broader market over time. And the easiest example there is the Australian market. So you think of the ASX 200, if you were to follow the market exactly, you'd have about 12% of your portfolio in CBA shares 7% in BHP shares about 4% in CSL shares based on the value of each of these companies in the index. Our investment team will evaluate what drives value across companies and will seek to hold shares that have competitive advantages and have the opportunity to outperform the broader market. So we'll adjust the weighting of different assets in the portfolio based on our research.

Our active management approach being that combination of both asset allocation and security selection, has been able to add value over the long term for AustralianSuper members.

Thanks, Sam. Now Amber, a lot of questions were around how we consider regional weightings when it comes to asset allocation. How they may change, particularly given the big shift in policy coming out of the US. One member asking, ‘How is AustralianSuper managing risk of US tariffs and the global impact on investments?’

So US tariff policy has certainly been a really important driver of markets this year, as well as our research into and the management of the fund's investments. What we've found through our research is that whilst the US exceptionalism story has, I guess, broadly lost a bit of its shine of late, on a relative basis, so comparing the outlook of the US economy and asset markets relative to those in other countries, and when we think in the medium to longer term, particularly when it comes to growth assets, when we take this perspective, the US still looks to retain its outperformance position and therefore US equities will remain an important part of the portfolio. A big reason is because the outlook’s not just about government policy. Remember, I spoke about those drivers being macro but also thematic, a significant positive feature of the outlook and one that's been with us for a couple of years now, continues to be the tailwind generated from the tech AI rollout. Here we've seen corporate earnings remaining healthy, and this has given us confidence in the sustainability of the AI theme in supporting some of the more growth-oriented assets like listed equities and the US equity market.

Thanks, Amber. So Sam, Amber has looked at the US. What about the rest of the world?

So yeah, the number one goal for the investment team is to provide returns for members by choosing investments to improve their retirement. And we can look at it in two different ways. One is by investing in Australia and global markets. And also we're looking to expand the investment team to look for additional investment opportunities. So a major part of the portfolio is invested in Australia. And the map on the screen shows the proportion of assets in different regions around the world.

So we have about 45% of the portfolio, or over $170 billion invested in Australia. And this benefits from the growth of the Australian economy. But also supports local industries and infrastructure developments. But we also look internationally, we look for regions around the globe to help widen the opportunity set of potential investments. This adds to the diversity of the portfolio and also assists with return generation and diversification. The second part is how we're expanding our team globally. We have 70 investment staff in our London office, 40 investment staff in our New York office.

And the benefit of having staff in these locations is it gives us access to local knowledge and investment opportunities that we wouldn't get if we were just sitting here in Australia. We also have a trading desk in London, which enhances our ability to access liquidity and improves our ability to execute on trades. So overall, the team is focused on getting access to assets that can add value and add return and diversity to the portfolio, and also to improve the efficiency of how we manage these assets for members.

Thanks, Sam. Now Amber, another member question, ‘Beyond historical performance, what is your long-term investment strategy and how is it positioned to navigate emerging challenges and opportunities?’ So to navigate emerging challenges and opportunities, we need to take a view on how markets will act and react. You are the Head of Thematic Research. What is thematic research?

Great question Peter. And look, honestly, I do love to talk about myself and my team. What we do in thematic research is look into how the structural drivers of the global economy and financial markets are changing, not just now, but over the next 3, 5 to 10 years and beyond. These drivers include geopolitics – so how countries relate to each other in war, in trade, but they also include technological disruptions. Now here I'm talking about the current boom in and excitement for AI. Also demographics, how are populations changing? How are fertility rates falling as we live longer? And what does this mean for the outlook?

So what is the reasoning then behind this approach?

Look we do it for two really important reasons. The first one is having a solid understanding of the key forces shaping the dynamics of the global outlook helps us to anchor our macro expectations. So accounting for how thematics impact upon or even change the pace of economic growth or employment dynamics, or inflation or even interest rates, both within the global economy, but also looking into the shifts between different national economies. And these are really important factors that inform the asset allocation of the portfolio.

Now the second reason is that understanding thematics feeds into more granular sector or even stock selection decisions that we make for our portfolio investments. Particularly this is powerful when we combine it with more detailed bottom-up research that our asset class teams perform. So here we're thinking about which industries we think will outperform to generate better returns for members or even economies, and where perhaps we don't want to invest into given the outlook for the future. So in a nutshell, that's what thematic research is and importantly, why we do it Peter.

Amber, now this next question, look, I don't expect an answer to it because we haven't got a crystal ball, but it does reflect the uncertainties that members have. I often tell members that investment markets hate uncertainty. What creates uncertainty and how does the fund use the thematic research you spoke about, to adjust the exposure to the different investment sectors?

Look, that's true. Uncertainty is driven by the unknown. Whether it's the unexpected shifts in government policy as we've seen this year from the US under the new Trump administration. And it's on again, off again treatment of tariffs. Or if we think about geopolitical developments such as the outbreak of war, often this uncertainty is due to human behaviour, which is unpredictable – you can’t model it – or due to binary decisions made by others that are incompatible with our and the market’s value set, and therefore come as quite unexpected to us. And this is where thematic research can help by bookmarking and anchoring the outlook.

So putting the thematic research into practice means using this work to gain greater confidence in certain trends in which we can profitably invest in or as I mentioned earlier, avoid investing in. A great example is the research and tracking we've been conducting in the AI thematic, which has driven confidence in our asset allocation positioning into a more growth oriented portfolio, with that higher weighting towards international shares in particular than say, we would have had otherwise, as well as some of our sector and our stock specific investments in areas including data centres and the US ‘Mag 7’ shares.

Now Sam, we've focused on the Balanced option, its performance, its asset mix, as it's the default option that most people are in. However, some watching today might be in some of the other PreMixed options. How does their asset mix differ from the Balanced option, and what levels of return would we expect?

We do have a range of diversified options that members can choose from, and a member can match their return and risk preferences to how they choose these options. These charts show the differences in the strategic asset allocation and the types of assets that each of the options invest in. And the best way to compare them is if you look at High Growth, this would have the highest allocation of growth assets, followed by the Balanced option, Conservative Balanced, and Stable would be the most conservative if a member wanted to reduce their volatility and have higher exposure to defensive assets. So this enables a member to choose an investment option that is most suitable for their situation.

So Sam, how have these options performed over time and does their performance match up with that risk return objective? The differences in the asset allocation that we saw can also lead to the performance outcomes and an option over time. And this chart compares the 1, 5, 10 and 15 year performance of these options. And over these time frames, the returns have been in line with the risk profile. And what that means is if you took more risk, you got more return over these time frame. So those growth assets have been a large part of the driver of returns over the past 10, 15 years. Now, this is worth looking at the flip side as well, that during a market downturn you would see more downside risk in an option like High Growth compared to Stable because of its allocation to growth assets. So a member would want to focus on investing in an option that meets their own risk appetite and their own objectives.

And continuing on this theme, Sam, a number of members asked about our investment options, especially those that cater to members who might be wanting to exclude investments in certain industries.

Definitely, so this slide shows the variety of different investment options that we have, includes our PreMixed options, DIY mix options, and our Member Direct options. But to highlight the question that the member asked, the Socially Aware option is what they're thinking of here, and this is listed under the PreMixed options. So the Socially Aware option is a diversified option that excludes certain assets based on environmental, social and governance screens. And we've conducted member surveys over time to get feedback on member's investment preferences. And this research has helped determine the screens that we apply to this option. And even recently on 1st of August, we've extended the screens that are applied to the option to better meet member expectations. And the best way to get an update on this is to look at the investment guide that provides additional details on those screens.

Thanks, Sam. So we've looked at recent performance, long-term performance, but what does the future hold? Now, I know you can't give an exact answer to this question, but a members asked, ‘What is the forecast for the financial year 25-26?’ I hear this all the time. Amber what are the challenges and opportunities that lie ahead?

Let me start with the challenges and opportunities, and then I'll speak to the outlook. As you mentioned, we don't have a crystal ball, but the team does try to do its best to discern where in the market we may be able to take the most fruitful investment opportunities, and where conditions may be a bit more challenging. We do this to our best abilities by conducting deep research into the most important issues of the day and for the future. And honestly, over our history, this has put us in good stead. The beginning of my career with the fund five years ago, we delved into what was happening during COVID to try to understand the most likely path of policy in response to conditions and therefore how economies, financial markets and asset prices were most likely to respond. And we successfully judged the resulting recession and market drawdown to be temporary and positioned the portfolio to take advantage of the strong recovery in asset prices that we saw.

So turning to the 25-26 outlook. As I mentioned earlier, volatility in US economic policy, including on tariffs, has certainly been keeping us busy in the short term. So let's start here. And it's here on the economic outlook front where we see investment challenges most concentrated. US economic activity has slowed over the past six months, and we expect the impact of the Trump tariffs to be felt further over the second half of this year. We see another leg to come in the economic slowdown, a bit more higher inflation driving weaker consumer spending and softer employment outcomes. Valuations for assets, particularly shares, are expensive at the moment and this environment bodes a more challenging, one from an asset returns perspective. But if we look through the second half of this year and towards 2026 and beyond, we actually see a more positive evolution in the market. And as the tailwinds from the AI roll out continues, cash rates are likely to be cut further in order to support economic activity. And moreover, I think with most deals being done between the US and the rest of the world, the uncertainty that we've seen this year around the trade and the tariff environment will start to fade.

I think overall, these macro and thematic factors, when they're put together, imply that the second half of this year could be challenging in terms of growth momentum, but the environment is expected to be more promising as we head into 2026 and beyond.

Now we've looked at the US, looked at the world, the wider world. What about the Australian economy?

Yep, Australia. So while Australia's remained exposed to changing global trade dynamics, the tone of the near-term outlook here is a little bit more positive. Falling inflation has allowed the RBA to cut the cash rate, including the latest move we saw this week, and the RBA signalled that a couple more rate cuts can be expected in the period ahead. This environment is helping to boost real household income growth after a long period of weakness. Higher real incomes – so here we're talking about incomes after inflation effects are accounted for – these high real incomes are important as they're working to support stronger consumer spending. And they're driving a broader transition away from the public sector growth that we've seen of late, and more towards the private sector.

Look, that said, there are some structural challenges like low productivity growth and the headwinds that we've spoken about to global trade. And these will work to limit some of that upside for the Australian economy in the more medium term Peter.

Thanks Amber and a final question that relates to asset classes. And this is one that many members ask, ‘Do you invest in crypto currencies?’ Very topical.

Look, let me be frank. We don't currently have any cryptocurrencies in the portfolio, but it's a really good question because cryptocurrencies and more broadly digital assets and blockchain technology is, look, it's a really interesting area of financial innovation where we've seen some notable developments in recent years. And certainly from a holistic perspective, we're always looking at new investment opportunities to support returns for our members.

Now thinking more recently, one development in this space that's caught our eye is the evolution in stablecoins. So both private stablecoins and what have been dubbed public stablecoins or central bank digital currencies. If we look at the private side, a significant piece of legislation was passed in July in the US, the Genius Act, and this formalises some really important regulatory, compliance and financial accounting requirements for US issued stablecoins. And most significantly, the Genius Act mandates that these stablecoins must be backed 1 to 1 by the US dollar or US dollar denominated assets such as Treasury bills.

And this is a really important formality, which was only previously implied by stablecoin issuers. Now it's regulated. On the central bank digital currency side, this has also been evolving. We've seen significant pilot schemes having been launched in recent years by major economies around the world. This includes Europe, China, Canada, the UK, even right here in Australia. And the reason we are interested in these developments is that they could have a significant influence on the global financial and cross-border payment systems as volumes grow and as they become less of a novelty and I guess much more mainstream. And this could also drive changes in how exchange rates move against each other. It could create different pressures in bond markets, and even generate an evolution in banking systems as we currently know them.

Thanks, Amber. Now we've had many questions from members ask me about how to choose the right investment options, such as ‘How aggressive should my portfolio be? I'm retired in my mid-seventies.’ ‘At 50, what is the safest way to increase investments in my in my super?’

Look, there are three main things to consider when it comes to making an investment choice. Your investment time frame. How long the money is going to be invested. Your hands on level, how much you want to be involved in that selection. And finally, your risk appetite. What is your attitude towards that risk return that Sam spoke about? Now, as mentioned before, we do offer a range of investment options that may suit your preferences and on our website we have a risk profiler tool, which could help you with your approach to risk and return.

Now, a lot of people have asked questions about which option suits them and given their age when they plan to retire. If you'd like to know more about the investment options available to you, and which options or options may best suit you, please register for and join our investment webinar on the 28th of August at 2pm (AEST). There you can discover how you can tailor your super to suit your goals. The webinar will explore your options from the PreMixed options we've spoken about right through to the Member Direct for those that want to be maybe more hands on. To register for this investment webinar, please use the QR code on the screen on the white section of the screen you can see, and if you use that QR code it will take you to a registration page.

Now, even though today's webinar was focused on investments, we had over 100 questions asking about retirement planning, questions about drawing money out of an income stream in retirement, when you can access your super, when you can access the government age pension estimating how long a million dollars might last if I retire at the age of 60. We have webinars addressing these. So again, please register for and join one of our retirement planning webinars.

To do this, similar to the investment webinar, use the QR code on the right hand side of the screen or the darker side of the screen, and that way you can register and attend, one of our webinars, either to help you with your investment choice or maybe to help you on that journey to retirement that we are all on. Maybe some of us closer to it than others.

We also offer a range of webinars, especially around questions towards not only planning for retirement, but also understanding what transition to retirement might be, a way to ease into retirement. And the magical question that I get asked so often, do you need $1 million to retire? Beyond the webinars, we can also help you, through advice.

Now, if you have further questions, you can ask that via the app, the chat function on the website, or we can call us on 1300 300 273. We also provide you with access to a number of different advice options depending on your needs and how you want to interact with us.

You can speak with an advice team member over the phone, for simple personal advice. Now, simple personal advice when it comes to super, and your AustralianSuper account refers to your investment options. Which one should I choose? Making contributions to super. What might be the best way for me to get money into super? And also insurance and retirement outcomes. For more tailored or more comprehensive advice, you might want to meet with a financial planner, either face to face or by our secure video link.

So there are a number of different ways we want to help you. How it works out for you is really going to come down to what your plans are. Maybe a bit of research, but maybe also a bit of help, from a financial planner. Whether it's through AustralianSuper or through your own resources.

Sam and Amber, thank you for your input around what and how AustralianSuper invests, what the past year has been like and more importantly, what and how has Australia performed over that longer term. Because your super is a long-term investment, maybe 30 or 40 years whilst you're working, but maybe another 20 or 30 years whilst in retirement. So on behalf of AustralianSuper, thanks, Sam, thanks, Amber, and thank you to the members for your pre-submitted questions and for joining us this evening.

I trust that the webinar has met your expectations, and maybe I'll look forward to seeing you, well, you can see me, I can't see you, at a future webinar. So thanks a lot. Good evening.