Heron launches "Heron Quality Star Ratings" for superannuation and releases 2006 ratings

The Heron Partnership has launched the Heron Quality Star Ratings for both corporate and retail superannuation products, covering close to 100 individual products. Heron also announced the 2006 ratings, with 5 star ratings going to 17 corporate products and 22 industry fund products.

Chris Butler, Managing Director of The Heron Partnership said, "We have been assessing superannuation products for close to 4 years, but during that time we have not promoted our ratings publicly. However, due to the greater focus on superannuation through 'choice of fund' we have decided to make our ratings public as we do for financial planners through our Heron Advisor service."

When releasing the ratings for 2006, Mr Butler, said "The primary goal of the Heron Quality Star Ratings is to provide a realistic and objective representation of the strengths and weaknesses of a product. The ratings are based on feature specific benchmarks which guide Heron'™s assessors to rate the feature objectively, with all products therefore being rated on the exact same basis. The ratings for each feature are aggregated to an overall rating for each product."

"Unlike some other rating systems, there is no limit to the number of products that can receive a 5 star rating. Through the Heron Quality Star Ratings system, product issuers are encouraged to improve their products. We also disclose a numeric score, so that financial planners, subscribing to Heron Advisor are able to differentiate within each of the star levels. This is a useful feature that has been embraced."

"Product Issuers have welcomed our choice of 'stars' as the basis of our rating system due to their universal meaning and acceptance and also the rigor of our analytical approach to assessing products".

The Heron Quality Star Ratings have 5 levels as follows:

5 stars - Outstanding
4 stars - Commendable
3 stars - Good
2 stars - Poor
1 stars - Unacceptable

Heron utilises a holistic methodology to assess and rate the various components of a superannuation fund, grouped under 5 Areas of Importance developed by Heron of Investment Arrangements, Contributions, Ancillary Benefits, Communications and Insurance. Heron assesses about 150 features under these Areas of Importance to develop its comparative product ratings and commentary, which are accessed through its Heron Advisor system utilised by financial planning dealer groups and individual financial planners.