Provided by Garrie Lette, Chief Investment Officer, Catholic Super

With the significant growth in the assets invested in our super and pension funds, and responding to member feedback for greater investment choice, two new options will be available to Super and Pension members from 22 June – RetirePlus and Conservative Balanced. These new options are carefully designed to suit investors at specific life stages, and provide additional flexibility to members when tailoring investments to their particular financial needs, investment timeline and return objectives.

RetirePlus - view investment profile

RetirePlus is designed to suit members who are approaching retirement or already retired and looking for additional protection against market risk and inflation. Compared with other options with a similar overall risk profile, RetirePlus should provide some additional protection against these key risks.

Protecting against market risk

• The RetirePlus risk of capital loss over short to medium periods remains significant, but this risk is expected to be lower than that of our other investment options that have a higher equities (growth) component.
• Its strategic asset allocation is more conservative than our Balanced Option.
• In addition, RetirePlus will utilise equity strategies which are expected to provide greater protection against market downturns. That is, in both Australian equities and global equities, the panel of underlying managers will differ from that used in our other options.

Protection against inflation

• One of the key risks facing those who are close to retirement, or who have already retired, is inflation risk, ie the risk that their investments will perform poorly during an inflationary outbreak, just when their living costs rise more rapidly.
• RetirePlus will have an allocation to investments where the underlying cashflows are explicitly linked to inflation so as to provide some additional protection against this risk.

In combination, we believe this investment approach will mean the new RetirePlus option will deliver a pattern of returns which is distinctively different from that of our existing options.

Members considering this option should do so with a minimum investment timeframe of five years.

Conservative Balanced - view investment profile

Conservative Balanced is designed to achieve solid returns over the long term.

• It will use the underlying managers and strategies employed within our existing options, with a risk profile between that of our existing Balanced and Moderately Conservative options.
• Returns are likely to be moderately volatile and the risk of capital loss over short to medium term periods is significant.

Members considering this option should do so with a minimum investment timeframe of five years.

Visit our investment options page to view the new options profiles.