The awards for Best Pension Fund and Best MySuper Product were taken out by Cbus and AustralianSuper respectively.

HESTA won the most awards, with four, including one of the new awards - Best Innovation - ESG Investment Leadership.

Money magazine's Best of the Best superannuation awards have renewed focus after amalgamating with the Rainmaker SelectingSuper Awards as a result of Money's acquisition by the Rainmaker Group in 2019.

The Best of the Best Awards continue under the same methodology of the past SelectingSuper Awards, and are now in their 21st year. The research team at Rainmaker Information is responsible for the work that provides the foundations for the current Awards.

The combination saw the superannuation awards on offer increase from 17 awards in 2020 to 25, as asset class top performers were recognised.

Three new Best Innovation Awards were also included, Best Innovation - ESG Investment leadership, Best Innovation - ESG Trailblazer and Best Innovation - Community Partnerships, awarded to HESTA, Australian Ethical and LUCRF Super respectively.

In receiving the award for Best Super Fund, Aware Super chief executive Deanne Stewart congratulated her team.

"It's been amazing how focused the team has been through Covid-19," she said. "While we have worked to keep the team focused and looking after their health and wellbeing, they've been so motivated to get these deals done as well as other things, because they really understand [why it's] in our members' best interest."

The executive director of research at Rainmaker Information, Alex Dunnin, explained the complex challenge of identifying Australia's best super funds as part of the awards.

"There are more than 500 super fund products, offering thousands of investment choices. The best performing products are assessed by not just how they went over the past three years, but how they went over the past five and 10 years, as well as the most recent - and turbulent - 12 months to June 30, 2020."

"Using Rainmaker's proprietary composite scoring method, this enables us to reward consistency and spot the products that perform the best over both the good times and bad," said Dunnin.

A notable mention also goes to Cbus Super who dominated the pension product sector, claiming three of the five awards on offer: Best Pension Fund, Best Moderate Pension Product and Best Growth Pension Product.

The full list of superannuation Best of the Best winners is below: