Retirement Income Review

While the publishing of retirement income strategies is a big step forward into super’s new frontier, many of those strategies are based on a “very unsafe foundation.”

As the new Labor Government explores pathways to 15 per cent, the superannuation industry needs to examine whether that’s really in the best interests of members.

Labor wants to “super-charge” the Australian economy by putting our largest pool of capital to work both at home and away. But on Your Future, Your Super, they won’t be throwing the baby out with the bath water. The Your Future Your Super (YFYS) reforms represent one of the most daring political plays by the…

No amount of hard data or compelling evidence is going to stop people who want to use their super to buy a home. And super funds might have to help out after all. The idea of using superannuation for housing has a simple allure that has seen it revived several times in the thirty-odd years…

The Government’s ‘Retirement Income Covenant’ is off to a shaky start following initial reactions to its position paper. There is a complete absence of detail for super funds to ponder. While welcoming the Government’s move on the subject and the aim for resulting legislation to be non-prescriptive in nature, three influential and apolitical organisations have…

Magellan Financial Group’s ‘FuturePay’, launched with a fanfare last week (June 1) after considerable pre-launch publicity, heralds an escalation in a retirement products arms race. Both big super funds and fund managers are scrambling for positions in the race, which is expected to have strong demographically driven growth for years to come. Magellan, arguably the…

The rhetoric was similar, though not quite as fiery. But the audience was different. A lot has changed since the first CMSF, held symbolically, in Wollongong. In 1990, Wollongong, NSW, was still referred to as the ‘steel city’. BHP had only begun to shut down its furnaces in Australia. Labor was in power federally and…

Last year’s early release scheme for super fund members was a major event for both members and their funds, according to a report by advisory firm EY. For many funds it was an opportunity, too, which was largely missed. The EY report and short video, ‘Rethinking Member Engagement’, says: “As a result of the Government’s…

David Knox, Mercer senior partner, actuary and founder of the global pensions systems index, threw down a challenge to the Retirement Income Review to look at a ‘universal pension’ for all Australians. He is now talking to the industry. Knox, the lead author of the Mercer Global Pension Index, says Australia, which already has one…

The switch in focus to retirement incomes, ahead of the introduction of the Retirement Income Covenant, was evident at the annual SMSF Association conference last week. Deborah Ralston said: “Super has been a bit overdone”. Ralston, one of the panellists on the Government’s Retirement Income Review (RIR), which handed down its report in July 2020,…