Your super in 2024

As 2024 draws to a close, we look back on a year of change and expansion at smartMonday. The past 12 months have seen a lot of consolidation and refinement, as we’ve been hard at work implementing improvements to your experience.

You’ll be pleased to hear that our administration transition is now complete. We have a new administration service and an upgraded website both now up and running. Thank you for your patience during these transition periods; it’s taken a lot of hard work here at smartMonday and we look forward to sharing the benefits with you as these processes take root. 

In June, we simplified our range of investment options, trimming out 12 products based on member use and each option’s ability to deliver its expected investment return. Our new menu of options strengthens returns and has lowered costs for most members. 

As we shared in October, we also introduced a buy-sell-spread transaction fee, which is a fairer way to deduct transaction costs because it’s only charged to those doing the transaction, rather than everyone in the investment option.

We’ve also revised the asset allocations in your portfolio to better capitalise on recent changes in investment markets, both here and internationally.

The focus for most of the year has been a pivot towards international shares, which have performed better than domestic ones, thanks to big tech firms like Apple, Microsoft, Meta and Wall Street darling Nvidia.

We’ve also actively focused on diversifying your super investments over the past year, putting your proverbial eggs into more baskets to safeguard against market fluctuations.     

Another recent international alternative investment also made a positive impact. The US-based Excelsior Renewable Energy Investment Fund targets renewable energy infrastructure, including wind, solar and batteries.

This focus on renewable energy will help add green energy to the US energy mix. Renewable energy is a growth area as investors and energy users worldwide continue to seek opportunities to align with their climate commitments – and Excelsior is capitalising on a gap in the middle of the market: targeting projects that are too small for the largest asset managers, and too big for many of the less sophisticated companies and investors who are looking for residential and small commercial projects. 

Although we’ve thinned out our exposure to domestic shares, we are still investing in alternatives here in Australia too, where there’s a strong pipeline of opportunity.

Towards the end of 2024 we added the Barwon Institutional Healthcare Property Fund to our portfolio. This fund invests in healthcare infrastructure across Australia, with one of its newest properties, a state-of-the-art private mental health clinic, opening in Brisbane. This helps free up hospital beds in local hospitals and enables people with issues such as eating disorders, addiction and trauma to undergo recovery programs with a team of dedicated mental health specialists.

Overall, your smartMonday super has outperformed the median average.

As we look to 2025 and beyond, we’re planning to further optimise our insurance offer to deliver the best value for you and will continue to review our pension and MySuper options to deliver the best possible outcomes and experiences for you, our members.

Well, that’s a wrap on 2024. We’ll be back in 2025 with regular content updates and useful tips and tools – and remember, if there’s anything you need to know more about, please reach out to our team or contact our smartCoaches for tailored super advice.

Thank you for helping build a better future to retire into.