In as little as two hours, this course provides an overview of the factors affecting investment decisions by superannuation funds, the SIS requirements and constraints imposed on trustees when investing a superannuation fund’s assets, key investment concepts, such as risk and return and their importance and relevance, the various financial markets, the categories of assets and the impact of return, risk, liquidity, and tax on each of the four major asset classes, and alternative investments, derivatives and international investments.
Upon completion of this course, you will be able to:
– explain the SIS requirements when trustees formulate an investment strategy.
– outline the specific constraints trustees have in relation to the investment of fund assets
– explain the difference between capital growth and income
– explain the differences between total return, net return and real return
– outline the various ways to measure risk
– explain the risk/return trade-off
– explain how risk is minimised through diversification
– explain the importance of liquidity in a superannuation fund
– list and describe the main types of financial markets in Australia
– describe the difference between defensive and growth assets
– identify the four major asset classes and their characteristics
– outline the characteristics of alternative investments, derivatives and international investments
– identify the approaches that can be used to minimise risk within a superannuation fund
– explain how superannuation investments are taxed
– understand the reporting requirements in respect of derivative transactions made by a fund.
Investment Essentials is delivered completely online in an interactive e-learning format comprising one e-learning module and a final quiz. Online delivery means you can study anywhere, anytime.
Corporate virtual workshop options are also available – contact us to discuss.
Flexible online
CPD Points
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Acknowledgement of Country
We want to respectfully acknowledge the Traditional Owners and Custodians of these lands, seas, and waters throughout Australia. We pay our respects to Elders both past and present. We acknowledge the history, the resilience and the continual contributions of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples of their Country.
Acknowledgement of Country
We want to respectfully acknowledge the Traditional Owners and Custodians of these lands, seas, and waters throughout Australia. We pay our respects to Elders both past and present. We acknowledge the history, the resilience and the continual contributions of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples of their Country.
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Executive Director - Superannuation, Life & Private Health Insurance, APRA
Carmen joined APRA in March 2023 and holds the role of Executive Director, Life and Private Health Insurance and Superannuation.
She has had an esteemed career in financial services, spanning over 25 years. She has held diverse leadership roles at Westpac and Commonwealth Bank of Australia, including across risk, transformation and change, product and portfolio development, and sales and service.
Prior to joining APRA, she held the role of General Manager, Risk Transformation Delivery Integration at Westpac. This involved leading the group-wide implementation of a suite of solutions to uplift risk management capability and develop data, analytics and reporting.
Carmen leads with a values-driven approach and a particular interest in developing and mentoring talent.
She holds a Bachelor of Commerce and Accounting, is a certified Chartered Accountant and a Graduate of the Australian Institute of Company Directors.
Novartis Professor of Leadership and Management, Harvard Business School
Amy C. Edmondson is the Novartis Professor of Leadership and Management at the Harvard Business School, a chair established to support the study of human interactions that lead to the creation of successful enterprises that contribute to the betterment of society.
Edmondson has been recognized by the biannual Thinkers50 global ranking of management thinkers since 2011, and most recently was ranked #1 in 2021 and 2023; she also received that organization’s Breakthrough Idea Award in 2019, and Talent Award in 2017. She studies teaming, psychological safety, and organisational learning, and her articles have been published in numerous academic and management outlets, including Administrative Science Quarterly, Academy of Management Journal, Harvard Business Review and California Management Review. Her 2019 book, The Fearless Organization: Creating Psychological Safety in the Workplace for Learning, Innovation and Growth (Wiley), has been translated into 15 languages. Her prior books – Teaming: How organizations learn, innovate and compete in the knowledge economy (Jossey-Bass, 2012), Teaming to Innovate (Jossey-Bass, 2013) and Extreme Teaming (Emerald, 2017) – explore teamwork in dynamic organisational environments. In Building the future: Big teaming for audacious innovation (Berrett-Koehler, 2016), she examines the challenges and opportunities of teaming across industries to build smart cities.
Edmondson’s latest book, Right Kind of Wrong (Atria), builds on her prior work on psychological safety and teaming to provide a framework for thinking about, discussing, and practicing the science of failing well. First published in the US and the UK in September, 2023, the book is due to be translated into 24 additional languages, and was selected for the Financial Times and Schroders Best Business Book of the Year award.
Before her academic career, she was Director of Research at Pecos River Learning Centers, where she worked on transformational change in large companies. In the early 1980s, she worked as Chief Engineer for architect/inventor Buckminster Fuller, and her book A Fuller Explanation: The Synergetic Geometry of R. Buckminster Fuller (Birkauser Boston, 1987) clarifies Fuller’s mathematical contributions for a non-technical audience. Edmondson received her PhD in organisational behavior, AM in psychology, and AB in engineering and design from Harvard University.
Assistant Treasurer and Minister for Financial Services
Born in Brindisi, Italy, Daniel was a young child when he moved with his family to Australia. He grew up in Canberra and completed his first degrees – arts and law – at the ANU. He then completed a Master of Economics (University of Sydney) and a PhD in economics from Yale.
He lectured at Monash University, was an economic adviser in the Gillard government and was a Victorian MP from 2014 to 2018. As Parliamentary Secretary to the Treasurer of Victoria, Daniel helped deliver major infrastructure projects and developed innovative financing structures for community projects.
In 2018 he was preselected for the new federal seat of Fraser and became its first MP at the 2019 election, re-elected in 2022 and 2025. From 2022 to 2025, Daniel was chair of the House of Representatives’ Standing Economics Committee in which he chaired inquiries; economic dynamism, competition and business formation and insurers’ responses to 2022 major floods claims.
In 2025, he became the Assistant Treasurer and Minister for Financial Services.
In August 2022, Daniel published ‘Safety Net: The Future of Welfare in Australia’, which aims to explore the ways in which an insurance approach can improve the effectiveness of government service delivery.
