Best of the Best 2025: How we chose the winners

The Best of the Best 2025 bumper issue of Money magazine is out tomorrow! Here's how we chose the winners.

Identifying the best superannuation, managed funds, exchange traded products, banking products, insurers and online share brokers is no easy task. There are hundreds of product providers with thousands of products, choices and options to assess.

Rainmaker, publisher of Money, has been reviewing superannuation, managed funds and their investment managers for more than 20 years and this year we again led the reviews and assessments.

Rainmaker is also the publisher of The Good Superannuation Guide, The Good Investment Guide, The Good Financial Planning Guide, Financial Standard, Industry Moves and FS Sustainability. Reviewing each market segment requires a different approach and the sections below describe how it was done.

Superannuation

There are more than 500 super products in Australia offering tens of thousands of investment choices. Money's awards span best-performing products, the best value and the most innovative as well as those that deliver the best-value insurance.

To find the top performers, Rainmaker reviewed MySuper products and asset classes that include growth, balanced, moderate (capital stable), equities, property, bonds, cash and ESG investment options.

MySuper products are default flagship products used by most employees for their employer-paid superannuation; they are the cornerstone of most members' retirement savings, holding half of all the superannuation owned by working Australians.

MySuper products come in two flavours: diversified single-strategy products that spread your savings across all the major asset classes and lifecycle products that invest your savings differently depending on how old you are.

Rainmaker identifies Australia's best-performing superannuation products, MySuper single-strategy products and investment choices by assessing how they performed over the past 10, five and three years as well as how they went over the 12 months to June 30, 2024. Rainmaker's proprietary composite scoring method enables us to reward consistency and spot the products that perform best over good times and bad.

MySuper lifecycle products were assessed in a similar way, except Rainmaker examined which ones had the best overall rankings across options designed for fund members aged in their teens, 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s and 60s. The best lifecycle product was the one that ranked the highest across the age groups.

In 2023-24, superannuation funds delivered positive returns in line with long-term averages. Interestingly, retail super funds did quite well, after lagging their profit-to-member counterparts over long periods. The longer-term numbers still favour profit-to-member funds, but retail funds did feature in a number of categories.

The best-value super product for young people is the best product when we look at the returns people in their 20s would have received taking into account the fees that hit their lower balance.

Identifying the lowest-cost products is done by assessing the investment, administration and member fees a fund member would pay if they had $10,000, $50,000 and $100,000 in their account. Zero-fee indexed options aren't actually free because members still pay fees.

Fees for retirement products, or pension products, were assessed by reviewing the fees a member would pay if they had $100,000, $500,000 and $1 million in their account. That is, Rainmaker ranked funds on multiple account balances for both super and pension products.

To be eligible for the Money awards, a superannuation product must be a public offer and AAA-rated by Rainmaker.

Managed funds and exchange traded funds

The managed funds awards consider a variety of factors when deciding which products are worthy winners and finalists.

While overall medium-term (five-year) performance is important, it is one factor among many. The judges also consider investment risk, in the form of volatility and downside volatility. After all, high returns may be achieved simply by taking on a lot more risk than other managers in the same asset class.

They also consider returns per unit of risk through the measurement of ratios such as the Sharpe and Sortino ratios.

They also understand that persistence of performance relative to peers is important.

To this end, the judges look at annual performance in each of the five years and mark higher those products that more consistently outperform their peers rather than products that may have had a single outstanding year, with average to below average returns in other years.

In some asset classes, such as equities, an adjustment is made depending on whether a product has shown a persistent bias to style factors such as value or growth.

The best investment managers or ETF providers are those that have the most funds shortlisted in the most major categories. It is, therefore, a determination of the number of products across different categories as well as the general excellence of those products.

Banking products

This year's awards covered flexible home, investment and a range of personal loans, term deposits, credit cards and savings accounts. The information used to assess the products was sourced by Rainmaker at the end of August 2024.

Home loan mortgages were assessed using the comparison rate for variable owner-occupied principal and interest mortgage with an 80% loan valuation ratio (LVR).

Term deposits (TDs) were assessed according to which paid the highest interest rates in two categories: short-term TDs that paid the best rates at maturity for terms shorter than 12 months and long-term TDs that paid the best annual interest rates for terms longer than one year.

Credit cards were ranked by the lowest cost of a $5000 revolving credit over two years, taking into account introductory terms and rates.

Loans were assessed by the comparison rate for a $30,000 unsecured loan over five years.

Savings accounts were ranked by weighted nominal interest rates applicable to a range of balances after monthly or annual fees and taking into account introductory terms and rates.

Insurance

This is one of the most important financial products. But it can be complex and hard to compare because premiums can vary according to the value of what you want to insure and how risky the insurer assesses you to be.

For example, your car insurance premiums can increase depending on your age, an increase in kilometres, the more customised your car is and even its colour.

Home and contents insurance, meanwhile, is determined by where you live, the type of building it is, your home security system and whether someone is home during the day.

In this era of more intense weather events, being in bushfire-prone and flood-prone areas can severely add to your premiums.

Online share brokers

Rainmaker reviewed not just which online share brokers charge the lowest fees, but also those that have the best features, the most features, and that provide access to the most investment types using the widest range of account types.

How to buy a copy of the Best of the Best 2025 issue

The Best of the Best 2025 special issue is on sale from December 5.

It's available from all good newsagents and supermarkets, or you can order your copy now!

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