The mainstream media and its disproportionate coverage of normal movements in investment markets is serving to undermine confidence in the financial services and superannuation industry, according to Frontier Advisors Australia director of consulting, Fiona Trafford-Walker.
Addressing the Association of Superannuation Funds Australia (ASFA) annual conference in Brisbane, Trafford-Walker said the mainstream media drove her mad by treating market movements in a sensationalist manner.
“Markets go up and markets go down, and that is normal,” she said.
Trafford-Walker pointed to the degree to which trust had been lost in the financial services industry since the global financial crisis and suggested that continuing media coverage had fed into that negativity and to a tendency towards short-termism.
She said the consequent short-termism then fed into the attitudes of super fund trustees.
“And if the trustees have short-term mind sets so will the managers they seek to use,” Trafford-Walked said.
