Tens of thousands of public servants and retirees have been urged not to panic after their super returns took a huge plunge in the past financial year.
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Workers saw returns on their retirement savings plummet from a market-leading 12.2 per cent in 2014-2015 to less than two per cent the following year.
The PSSap, the major public service fund with 130,000 members, 83,000 of them in the workforce and making contributions, returned just 1.8 per cent in 2015-2016, down from a market leading 12.2 per cent the previous year.
The PSS returned 1.75 per cent and the CSS 1.9 per cent
But the Commonwealth Superannuation Corporation said the defensive strategy it adapted during the year not only protected its members' retirement savings in a turbulent times for global finance, but set up the funds for more future growth.
The corporation pointed to the above-average three year return of PSSap of 8.4 per cent and five year average of 8.2 per cent.
Things could have been even worse for all super funds in 2015-2016 , one industry analyst cautioned, with only a stock market rally late in the financial years delivering the nest-eggs from losing money.
SuperRatings general manager of research Kirby Rapell says that the PSSap, and the Commonwealth Superannuation Corporation fund managers continue to do very well when measured across the three and five year average returns.
Mr Rapell said that returns were well down right across the sector in 2015-2016.
"In the last three and five years, their exposures across markets has worked pretty well but there was a lot more variance last year, listed market exposures were a little bit more challenging," Mr Rapell said.
"If you look at the last four years, you were getting really strong returns year after year.
"Funds are designed to return inflation plus three-and-a-half per cent but in recent years we've been getting way more than that, like inflation plus seven per cent, so you've got to look over that ten-year period and sometimes it's good, sometimes it's bad.
"People have become accustomed to really high returns but we're not living in that environment."
"This year, until the last three weeks of the year, it looked like there would be a negative return and then the market sprinted and we had a positive return.
"The beauty of that is that it's not negative, it's not taking away from people's savings.
"But unfortunately, it's not really adding to them."
A Commonwealth Superannuation Corporation spokesman said his fund manager colleagues had taken a "defensive decision" to increase cash holdings and lower equity exposure when faced with risky political events in the UK and the US, banking sector problems in Europe and rising debt levels in China.
"The defensive actions taken by CSC partially insulated its portfolios from the weakness in equity markets in the latter half of 2015-2016 and, importantly, provided CSC with the opportunity to buy back into equity markets, at lower prices, in the wake of the Brexit" event late in the financial year," he said.
"For a long term investment like superannuation, short term measurements, i.e. annual, are not truly reflective of how a fund is performing.
"This is highlighted by the performance of CSC's PSSap MySuper Balanced (default) fund in 2014-2015 when it delivered a return of 12.2 per cent, making it the best performing balanced fund in the country according to SuperRatings."
