It was just a year ago that most of us were reeling from losses of 20% or more. Sometimes much more. These losses forced quite a few into a retirement rethink. The losses also forced many of us to pay attention to where our superannuation is invested - something that was WAY overdue as many Australians simply hadn’t given their super the attention it deserves.

So now that we’ve had a serious look at where our super money is invested, we’re satisfied we’re in an appropriate investment option type and we’re convinced we’ve found the best performing funds in that option (we have done this, haven’t we?), we should be in a good position to benefit from the good returns of the past year. Just how good?

Well February wasn’t spectacular, but it was pretty decent and it has continued the recovery that’s been happening since early last year. The average return for the SR50 Balanced (60-76) Index* has come in at 0.84% for February. When added to the performance of these same products over the 12 months ending February 28, the result is an impressive 17.59% return. Not a bad year.

• You do remember what this is, donʼt you? Fifty products selected by SuperRatings as fairly representative of Balanced investment option products with 60-76% investment in growth products.

OK, the rolling return over 3 years still doesn’t look that flash, but as we like to say of super, we’re in it for life (which reminds us of the joke about marriage), so it’s better to concentrate on the 7 and 10 year results.

That’s the good news. The bad news is that some of you might have seen some figures issued last week by APRA (the government regulator of all things super). You might have been alarmed by APRA’s figures (which differ markedly from our own). You might have been tempted to rethink your super strategy based on these figures. Our view would be to not worry too much about APRA’s findings. Why? For starters, APRA’s data is 9 months old. As we said more than once in the GFC and post-GFC super circus, the ups and downs of the past 2 years have illustrated the importance of having current data.

The chart below shows how the returns measured by SuperRatings and those from APRA varied nine months ago. Why the gap? The SuperRatings returns are sorted by investment options. That’s so you can compare apples with apples. APRA did no sorting, but bundled all of a fund’s investment options (in one fund’s case, that’s a whopping 2,752 options) then calculated an average overall performance figure for that fund. That would be like giving Mercedes Benz a speed rating by clocking every vehicle they make and then averaging it - equally useless to a freight company buying a prime mover and a merchant banker buying a CLS500.

If most of a fund’s members were in the fund’s default option and the fund only offered a handful of options, that average might be fairly representative. But a lot of funds have a relatively small number of members in their default fund - and for them, the APRA returns might comes as a bit of a shock.

So, if you’ve seen the APRA figures and they’d caused heart palpitations, we hope we’ve convinced you to relax. Because our monthly returns figures are just 3 weeks old and the rolling 3, 7 and 10 year figures reflect recent performance, they are a great benchmark to determine how well your fund is performing.

Disclaimer: SuperRatings Pty Limited holds Australian Financial Services Licence No. 311880. This release has been prepared for the purpose of providing general advice only and has not considered the recipients objectives, financial situation or needs. The recipient should consider obtaining independent advice before making any decision about a financial product referred to in this report and should obtain and consider a copy of the relevant Product Disclosure Statement from the product issuer.