Page 22 - Print21 Magazine March April 2021

Finance
Looking to
With almost 200 superannuation funds in the country, all of us have a lot of choice as to where we put our retirement savings. There are retail funds, and industry funds, and self-managed funds. Under current legislation, most Australians are free to choose their fund, and to move their super to another fund at any time.
Media Super is the industry fund for the print sector and has been since the late 1980s when its predecessor Print Super was formed. While not everyone in the print industry is in the fund, printers make up a sizeable portion of Media Super’s members.
And print people who have their super
in the fund have many reasons to be satisfied. Media Super has strong, long- term investment performance and has consistently outperformed the majority
of those 200 funds over many years, even as a relatively smaller fund, with around $6bn under its care. Media Super’s ten-year performance for its Balanced (MySuper) investment option – which most members have invested in – to November 2020
was 7.83 per cent annualised; its three, five and seven-year MySuper figures all outperformed the median.
Industry funds have an inherent advantage over retail funds when it comes to investment performance because they are run only to benefit members, and profits are not directed to shareholders as with retail funds. Among industry funds, Media Super is one of the top performers.
As the fund continues to grow, it is continuing to progress. It now has a new CEO, Tony Griffin, who succeeded CEO Graeme Russell last year and is progressing towards merging with Cbus, one of the country’s biggest industry super funds, with some $60bn of retirement savings in its care. The Media Super brand will continue, as will its commitment to print.
Griffin took over the hot seat in early 2020, having joined Media Super in April 2019 as its chief operating officer, where he was effectively responsible for “anything that moved”. He has decades of experience in the super industry, getting his start in 1996, four years after the Keating reforms that made super compulsory.
Taking the helm at Media Super is
a big job, but Griffin seems eminently qualified. He says, “I have a finance and operations background, and have an in- depth knowledge of how industry funds operate, along with a detailed knowledge of compliance and risk. Media Super’s highest priority is to ensure we are protecting our members’ money. I also have a strategic background, and currently, the strategic implementation of the merger is a key objective of the CEO.”
The superannuation industry, which currently holds $2.9 trillion in assets, has
the long term
The industry’s own super fund Media Super has been working with the print industry for more than 30 years. With changes on the horizon, Print21 editor Wayne Robinson spoke to new CEO, Tony Griffin, about the fund’s performance and how it is continuing to look after printers’ retirement savings.
Confident: Tony Griffin, CEO, Media Super
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