The Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA) has signalled it will be steering well clear of placing fixed terms on the trustees of Australian superannuation funds.
Addressing questions within the Senate Standing Committee on Economics late last week, APRA chairman John Laker said the regulator did not have a formal limit on tenure but that trustee boards were required to renew themselves and find an appropriate balance between length of service, freshness of ideas and criticality of approach.
APRA manager Ramani Venkatramani said particularly since the licensing of superannuation trustees, the regulator had been focusing on the fact that “collectively, trustees have the skills and knowledge, fitness and propriety to discharge their functions”.
However, he said APRA had not taken a prescriptive approach to either industry funds or any other types of funds by dictating that trustees could not serve beyond a given number of years.
Laker said while there was no defined period of tenure for trustees, the regulator did ask boards to assess their own performance.
“That is an important way in which questions of longevity of tenure might be addressed if the overall performance of the board and its members falls short of some expectations,” he said.
