Industry and public sector superannuation funds have outperformed their retail counterparts, posting average returns of 10.2 per cent for the year, according to new figures from Chant West.

Retails funds, meanwhile, returned on average 9.6 per cent following a rocky June on sharemarkets.

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Average returns for the year were 9.8 per cent across balanced and growth options in all sectors.

The top performing fund was Queensland’s public sector fund QSuper, followed by industry funds MTAA Super and Statewide Super. AMP and MLC were the only retail funds in the top ten.

The results will give renewed force to the not-for-profit industry’s claim that it performs better than the for-profit retail sector.

In recent months retail funds have lifted their game, by some measures outperforming industry funds on pre-fee metrics.

However, retail funds have a much more concentrated exposure to sharemarkets, meaning when sharemarkets do well they outperform, but when they do badly they do not.

Industry funds, meanwhile, have high concentrations of younger members who are unlikely to touch their money until retirement. That means the funds are more able to invest in long-term, illiquid (i.e. hard-to-sell) assets such as infrastructure. That makes their returns less volatile.