Telling the QSuper investment story

This week’s post marks the end of my run as Editor of this blog. You may not have known this blog has an editor – but after 72 posts and 18 months it’s time for this role to shortly turn over to the next in line.

In reflecting I recently re-read my notes from the very first meeting I had with Brad Holzberger in setting up this blog some two and a half years ago. Fresh back from the Christmas break one year Brad raised the idea of the Investment team blogging directly to the members we work on behalf of each day.

We are not writers or professional communicators first and foremost! Our day jobs are investing your super. While we may not get blogging absolutely right every time, we are committed to telling you about what we do and sharing our views on investing for retirement.

The main motivation behind blogging was, and remains, quite straightforward. QSuper does things a little differently and we saw a risk in not communicating this effectively to you. Over the time that the QSuper investment team has been blogging I hope we’ve given you some insight into what we do here each day in investing for your retirement. 

29 of the 35 people that work in the Investment team here have written one or more blog posts. And these people cover the full investment spectrum including traders, actuaries, economists, portfolio managers, strategists, governance specialists and of course our Chief Investment Officer, Brad.

We get a lot of benefit out of writing to you. If we can’t succinctly tell you in a 500 word blog post what we do it highlights to us where we may need to clarify our thinking. In this way we see the blog as one of the ways to hone our ideas and seek your thoughts.

The kinds of things we blog about can be quite technical. And telling the QSuper investment story through a series of 500 word blog posts can be an interesting challenge.

But rather like a mosaic, the hope is that over time and piece by piece we’re building up a picture of QSuper’s investment capability. And further that this blog provides a platform for you to put your questions directly to us.

Times are changing and the imperative for super funds to communicate with their members in a meaningful way is only getting stronger. Disclosure is a key theme within the industry right now on matters ranging from fees to portfolio holdings. And there is ongoing debate as to what type and level of information is most useful and relevant.

I speak for the team in expressing a huge thank you to those that read this blog. We’ve built a reasonable following over the last little while and we’re grateful for your support. We value every piece of feedback - it’s essential to ensure we hit the mark and keep our conversation with you relevant. If there is even one thing you’d like to know more about please feel free to let us know in the comments section below.

With best wishes, Kate.