UniSuper, the Melbourne-based super fund for Australia's higher education and research employees, will "open to new members from outside the sector" starting in July.
The 450,000 participant, A$95 billion ($73.2 billion) fund has delivered industry-leading annual returns of 9% over the past decade, with in-house management of 70% of the portfolio helping to keep fees low, CEO Kevin O'Sullivan said in a news release Thursday. Going forward, adding scale will become increasingly important to maintaining that success, he said.
"We have scale now, and opening more broadly will enable UniSuper members to benefit from even greater scale," he added in the news release.
"With both the higher education sector and the superannuation industry undergoing significant disruption, scale is crucial to delivering better retirement outcomes for all members and so the time is right to offer more Australians access," Mr. O'Sullivan said in an email.
Opening the fund more broadly has been in the pipeline for the last three years, following the success of UniSuper's "Personal Account" product allowing participants' families, former participants and university affiliates to join, he said in the email.
