Profile: Jeff Bresnahan
By Barbara Drury | theage.com.au | 23 October
Jeff Bresnehan at his Jones Bay Wharf office. Bresnehan is the proprietor of Super Ratings, which looks at and determines how different super funds are performing. Photo by Domino Postiglione
In a perverse way, the negative returns are one of the best things that could happen. It makes people realise that super's not a magic pudding pumping out the 14% returns we've been seeing for years," he says.
The average super fund was 6% in the red last financial year but Bresnahan says that needs to be viewed in perspective. "Seen over five years, people are still up over 50% on where they were."
He is in a unique position to take in the big picture, after "falling into super" back in 1979. He didn't realise it at the time but his break was getting a job straight out of school with Sun Alliance Life, where he saw big changes in the super industry.
"My father wanted me to be an actuary, but I failed the HSC. I hated school - I loved footy too much and I just didn't study," he says.
Mr Bresnahan redeemed himself by getting an MBA and starting a super administration company. When he sold it in 2000, a non-competition clause kept him out of the industry for two years.
At the time there was not much research on super funds. "It was a $500billion industry and it was not researched at all. There was an opportunity for someone to take the consumer's point of view.
"My aim was to make funds accountable. It'sworked out, but I was surprised how negative the industry response was early on. They said they didn't want to be measured.
"The biggest issue when I started (SuperRatings) was that the average consumer had no idea how their super was being run. That meant funds had open access to charge whatever fees they wanted - there was half a trillion dollars just sitting there open to being ripped off.
"By creating league tables it wasn't hard to work out what were value funds. Now (super) gets front-page coverage because every Australian has an account."
So where does the man with his finger on the pulse invest his money? "I'm a member of quite a lot of funds. Sometimes funds refuse to give us information, so I have to join to get it. I have a mix of commercial and not-for-profit funds and a self-managed super fund as well."
First published by TheAge.com.au on October 23 2008
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