Lifetime Retirement Income has put the underlying funds up for review on its freshly acquired employer superannuation master trust.
Ralph Stewart, Lifetime founder, said the group had hired consultancy firm, EriksensGlobal, to run a ruler over the investment strategy backing the former Aon employer super platform.
“We’ve got an eight-week investment review process underway to see if we need to make any improvements,” Stewart said.
Lifetime retained the Aon underlying managers – ANZ, Nikko, Milford and Russell Investments – after buying the business from Fisher Funds late in June for $3.7 million. Post-sale, Lifetime also kept the Aon administrators (Link and Adminis) while transferring custody from Public Trust to Adminis.
Fisher Funds sold the roughly $200 million Aon master trust to Lifetime just six months after paying $32 million for a KiwiSaver/employer super combo deal late in 2021.
While Fisher is one of the now five employer master trust providers, the manager has focused on absorbing the Aon KiwiSaver scheme with further distractions ahead in the wake of its $310 million Kiwi Wealth buyout last week.
Data from Morningstar shows the Aon KiwiSaver scheme reported about $650 million under management at the end of June compared to almost $800 million at point-of-sale to Fisher last year.
Lifetime also makes its debut in the latest EriksensGlobal master trust survey, which accounted for the Aon funds under Fisher assets in the March edition – briefly shrinking the market to just four providers from the long-standing set of six.
The NZX-owned SuperLife bought the ASB employer super platform last November for $25 million. Collectively, the SuperLife and ASB master trust assets amounted to almost $2.9 billion at the end of June (although the two schemes run separately still), the EriksensGlobal figures show, just behind the market leader, AMP, with close to $3.2 billion.
Mercer ($715 million), Fisher ($556 million) and Lifetime ($190 million) round out the employer super market that – while in run-down mode – has attracted a new player this year following the launch of a workplace savings scheme by Wellington-based boutique, Booster.
However, the EriksensGlobal June report shows the master trust sector was dinged-up by the 2022 investment market slump with total assets falling to $7.5 billion from the $8.7 billion recorded at the end of last year (equating to a drop of almost 14 per cent).
During the June quarter overall master trusts assets declined about $700 million, or 8.5 per cent.