This week, Simon Hoyle takes the team through Volume Four of Retirement Magazine, out today. The cover story traces the development of Bec Wilson’s Epic Retirement Tick and its impact on the retirement space, after her Epic Retirement Institute’s recent appearance on ABC’s Media Watch.

Senior journalist Darcy Song revisits her Fiduciary Investors Symposium panel on commodities, with the team discussing how funds justify a commodities allocation under the YFYS performance test and whether commodities carry more geopolitical risk than other asset classes.

This week, the team reports back from the Investment Magazine Fiduciary Investors Symposium, covering CPP Investments’ use of frontier AI models, ART’s fact-finding trip to China and how Australian asset owners are investing in emerging markets.

Darcy Song also reports on the Women in Super conference in Melbourne, which saw the launch of a 10-point policy document calling for increased data collection spanning super, the Age Pension, housing and private savings to create a more equitable retirement system.

Superannuation’s consolidation wave thinned the ranks of small funds and set a widely cited $30 billion floor for viability. But the chief executives of two funds well below it say that floor no longer decides who survives — and that member services and a willingness to pilot new ideas now count for more than purchasing power.

Meanwhile, only eight of 45 super funds received a “tick” designation from the Epic Retirement Institute in its latest assessment of retirement offerings, but the research firm that carries them out says the standard of funds’ retirement offerings is nevertheless improving overall.