As the retirement phase in our superannuation system becomes increasingly important, we are bringing you monthly pension fund returns in addition to our monthly super fund performance update.
Thanks to Chant West, we are providing returns for their five diversified pension fund categories – Conservative, Balanced, Growth, High Growth and All Growth. These are the same categories Chant West uses for accumulation funds and generally hold the same underlying investments. This means pension fund returns are driven by the same factors as accumulation fund returns.
See also: Monthly super returns and annual pension performance.
Pension fund returns rebounded strongly in April, with the median Growth fund (61–80% in growth assets) up 2.7% over the month and 6% over the financial year to date.
Despite ongoing market volatility due to the mixed signals coming out of the Middle East and the Trump administration, all pension fund risk categories were positive in April.
Chant West head of superannuation investment research Mano Mohankumar says the April share market rally was driven by a tenuous ceasefire in the Middle East and solid corporate earnings in the US.
Developed market shares soared 9% hedged but a more modest 4.4% unhedged due to the strong Aussie dollar. Emerging market shares did even better, up 9.4% unhedged, while the Australian market brought up the rear with a still solid 2.3% gain.
Bond markets are fighting headwinds from stubbornly high inflation and rising interest rates, with Australian and international bonds up just 0.1% and 0.3% respectively in April.
“The experience over the past two months is a timely reminder that super is a long-term game. Members who panicked in March and switched to cash or a lower-risk diversified option not only turned paper losses into real ones, but also missed out on the subsequent market rebound,” says Mohankumar.
The table below shows median pension fund performance across various timeframes for five investment categories to the end of April 2026.
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.