Heron announces super rating service

Superannuation consultant Heron Partnership has launched a ratings service for corporate and retail superannuation products, that will compete with established research houses Chant West, SuperRatings and Rainmaker for business.

The Heron Quality Star Ratings service covers almost 100 individual products and rates them on five levels, with one star indicating "unacceptable" and five stars "outstanding".

Heron Partnership managing director Chris Butler said that ratings are based on feature specific benchmarks, which means that all products are rated on exactly the same basis.

"There is no limit to the number of products that can receive a five star rating," said Butler. "We also disclose a numeric score so that financial planners...are able to differentiate within each of the star levels."

He added that products that give a good range of options and depth of features would rate well, but that cost was not taken into account.

"This is an important differentiator...our view is it is not reasonable to penalise lower cost products, nor higher cost products, without an understanding of what it is that is actually on offer."

Heron yesterday announced its 2006 ratings, with five star ratings going to 17 corporate and 22 industry fund products.