NZ Super recognised for two decades of outperformance

The New Zealand Superannuation Fund is the world's best-performing sovereign wealth fund over the past 20 years.

That's according to GlobalSWF's annual rankings, which found NZ Super Fund's returns over the 20 years to June 2024 significantly outperformed its peers.

Over the period, the average sovereign wealth fund returned 6.4% and the average pension fund return was 6.8%, but NZ Super Fund achieved an average annualised return of 10.03%.

Over 10 years, it saw a 10.33% return - also ensuring it nabbed the title of top performer among sovereign wealth funds. AP7 took the top spot for pension funds with 13.11%.

"In part, that reflects how well global equities, which presently make up about 60% of the fund's assets, have performed during that time," NZ Super Fund chief executive Jo Townsend said.

"In addition, our active investment strategies have also outperformed both our Reference Portfolio benchmark and our long-term performance expectations."

Maintaining long-term, growth-oriented investment strategies through multiple market ups and downs had been central to the success of the NZ Super Fund, she added.

Meanwhile, over 10 years the Future Fund was the best performing Australian fund, achieving 8.29%. This beat Australian Retirement Trust (8.09%) and AustralianSuper (8.08%).

However, over 20 years Hostplus wins out with 7.88%, followed by AustralianSuper on 7.86%, Cbus at 7.64%, Australian Retirement Trust on 7.59% and Future Fund at 7.56%.

The rankings compare the returns of 13 sovereign wealth funds and 37 pension funds from 18 different countries.