In the past week alone I’ve been to two presentations on whether there’s any real point to superannuation any more. One was titled “Is Everything You Ever Learnt About Investment Wrong?” and the other, “Is Superannuation Still Effective?” The first one, held by bond manager PIMCO, was for the people who actually look after your retirement money. It was very interesting.

Basically, the suggestion was that all investment professionals, and especially those in superannuation, may need to adjust their funds’ exposure to the “equity risk premium” – the assumption that equity markets always outperform in the long term. It doesn’t mean this assumption is incorrect; just that if most people are more worried about losing money than making it and, even if the once-in-a-lifetime events such as the recent market crash happen just once in a lifetime, there should be more focus on preserving capital than outperforming rivals.

Even Bernie Fraser, in a series of superannuation advertisements, is in on the act – there’s nothing like the drone of a former reserve banker to make you feel like your money’s safe – telling viewers that “markets will recover”. He’s absolutely right – of course, but that’s little comfort for people who had been planning to retire tomorrow.

Jon Glass, a superannuation industry consultant, put it quite succinctly at the PIMCO presentation when he said; “If you want to believe in the redemptive eternity of the long term, that’s fine but you could be waiting a long time.”

Please don’t think your superannuation fund has been reckless with your money. Most of them have been trying to get you the best returns they can and doing it the best way they know how. It’s just that recent events have started to make everyone rethink what they know.

Superannuation is still a very effective investment vehicle, something the second presentation, by ING – this one for journos only – proved.

Even if you assumed your superannuation fund was not going to return anything during the next 10 years, you’d still be better off investing in superannuation than out of it. That’s because of its concessional tax structure. If you invested $50 a week for a year in super, you would have more money at the end of it than if you invested out of it (assuming zero returns for both investments and a marginal tax rate of 31.5 per cent) because it’s taxed at half the rate, that is, 15%.

So, back to the questions both presentations posed: is everything you ever learnt about investment wrong? Well no, but it does require some adjustment. Is superannuation still effective? Most definitely, yes.