If you’d like to know the details of where your super money is invested it is highly likely you’re out of luck.

Research by Market Forces has found that the investment details of 83 per cent of the assets in Australia’s top 50 superannuation funds are not disclosed.

That means you can’t find out if your fund is invested in tobacco, the arms industry or coal mining, making it very hard to make sure your investment philosophy is aligned with your personal philosophy.

Even if you choose the sustainable option in your fund, you will still be in the dark. Only two sustainable option funds, one run by AMP and one by Perpetual, give you all the details of their investments.

Is your fund on the fags? Photo: Getty

“There’s no correlation between sustainable investment and transparency,” Market Forces analyst Daniel Gocher told The New Daily.

The trillion dollar mystery

The funds surveyed by the environmental financial campaign group cover 97 per cent of super money outside the self-managed super fund sector and amount to $1.3 trillion. So the 83 per cent of undisclosed investments accounts for just under $1 trillion.

The lack of disclosure on the detail of investments runs counter to rising demand for investor choice.

“At a time when investors around the world are under increasing pressure to disclose the carbon risk in their portfolios, the Australian super industry has a trillion dollar secret,” Mr Gocher said.

“Australians are in the dark about whether their money is supporting environmentally destructive companies because our compulsory superannuation is an investment black box,” Mr Gocher said.

Only one fund in the survey, Energy Super, disclosed 100 per cent of its investment details.

Only three other funds disclose more than 50 per cent of their portfolio – HOSTPlus, Cbus and VicSuper. Average disclosure is just 17 per cent across the 50 largest funds and 19 funds disclose no investment details, the survey found.

Industry funds more open

Industry funds disclosed on average 25 per cent of their portfolios while for retail funds the figure was only four per cent, Mr Gocher said.

The top performers in the disclosure stakes.

These funds are the worst performers when comes to disclosure of investment details.

Source: Market Forces

The government has a plan

There is legislation before Parliament known as the Transparency Measures Bill that should make it much easier for members to see what’s in their fund. It would demand most funds detail 95 per cent of their investment assets but there are caveats.

Funds sold through “platforms” put together by finance houses and sold through advisors will be exempted from the rules, however. And funds will also be able to ask for carve-outs for commercial reasons.

Mr Gocher said there is a danger funds managers would apply pressure to water down the disclosure to 90 per cent.

Fund managers don’t want to tell. Photo: Getty

Revenue and Financial Services Minister Kelly O’Dwyer has said the legislation was still on the agenda but will have to wait until the government’s raft of super reforms is legislated. That means the Transparency Measures bill won’t appear till 2017.

But not all agree that 100 per cent disclosure is necessarily a good thing. Jim Minifie, superannuation researcher with the Grattan Institute, told The New Daily fund managers had legitimate reasons to keep their investment details secret.

“There are competing rationales for reporting and not reporting. If a fund manager has a a successful investment product and they report all the changes in their portfolio, others may be able to figure out their strategy and emulate it,” he said.

“Fund managers have to be able to find ways to be profitable enough to fund their research.”

On the other hand, members may want to know details of investments to be sure there is ‘truth in advertising’. That means investors can see whether claims made about the nature of funds are true.

Grattan Institute research found that funds labelled ‘growth’, ‘balanced’ and ‘conservative’ had similar performances. “We found over 10 years to 2013 there was very little relationship between volatility and net returns looking across lots of super funds.”