Australian Retirement Trust (ART) entered into a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Alcoa of Australia Retirement Plan (Alcoa Super) on 14 March 2023, ART’s third merger announcement since the start of the year.
The two funds will now commence a comprehensive due diligence process, and any potential merger will only progress if both funds determine that doing so would be in each of their members’ best interest. Alcoa Super has more than 5,000 members and $2 billion in funds under management (FUM).
Australian Retirement Trust’s Chief Executive Officer Bernard Reilly said ART was well on its way to achieving its target of $500 billion in FUM by 2030 and continuing to grow its national footprint for the benefit of it’s 2.2 million members.
“Our merger last year to become Australian Retirement Trust was really just the starting point and laid the foundation for our future growth strategy,” said Mr Reilly.
Midwinter Financial Services Pty Ltd (Midwinter) has announced a partnership with CQUniversity Australia to provide financial planning software to its students undertaking financial planning units.
As part of the agreement, CQUniversity’s financial planning students will be able to access Midwinter’s financial advice software, as well as training to support the students using the technology.
The digital advice software will be available to students studying a Bachelor of Business, a Bachelor of Accounting, and a Bachelor of Property Studies, as well as other non-business courses with financial planning units.
Stacey Cowan, Head of Sales at Midwinter says, “With adviser numbers continuing to fall across the industry, Midwinter is excited to support the development of future qualified financial advisers by providing access to advice technology during their education.”
Midwinter’s financial advice modules will be available to all CQUniversity students undertaking financial planning units from Term 1 2023 onwards.
At the ASFA Conference in February, Professor Veena Sahajwalla, Director of the Sustainable Materials Research & Technology Centre at University of New South Wales spoke of the importance of organisations adopting a circular economy mindset and shared some of their pioneering thermal transformations of waste resources into a new generation of green materials.
Now engineers at RMIT University have developed new fire-safe building claddings using 83% recycled glass, creating a promising circular-economy solution to address a major waste stream.
The RMIT team worked with materials technology company Livefield to produce the composite cladding, which they say is cheap, structurally robust and fire-resistant.
Lead researcher Associate Professor Dilan Robert said using recovered glass waste as an alternative cladding material could one day help reduce the amount of glass that goes to landfill.
The technology has met the key compliance requirement of claddings for non-combustibility (AS1530.1) set by Standards Australia.
When it comes to super balances, Renae Anderson, Manager, Select Advice at UniSuper sees financial confidence as key to addressing the financial gap between men and women and offers the following tips: