The Association of Superannuation Funds of Australia (ASFA) has expressed concern that the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority’s (APRA’s) efforts to provide broader data on superannuation fund performance and costs will fail to meet the needs of members.
In a submission responding to APRA’s proposals on providing fund level disclosure, ASFA has made clear that the regulator simply cannot deliver the necessary information based on the data it currently collects from the industry.
What is more, ASFA argued that fund members could actually be misled by the figures that APRA is proposing to release.
“ASFA formally expresses our concern regarding the ability of APRA to provide information which will be useful to superannuation fund members based on the information already held,” the submission said. “The reason for this is that the structures and practices of the industry mean that the data collected is not at the right level to relate to individual superannuation and retirement funds. As such the data would be misleading for fund members.”
The ASFA submission said that if APRA determined that such figures had to be provided, then ASFA recommended they be provided for the key or largest investment options within each superannuation, retirement product or division within a registered superannuation entity (RSE).
Elsewhere in its submission, ASFA made clear that the regulator needs to take account of the different structures which relate to superannuation funds, particularly industry funds and retail master trusts.
It said the data being collected by APRA was already at RSE level, but this did not achieve the aim of reporting at individual superannuation fund level for those providers (generally retail funds) where there were multiple superannuation funds within the one trust.
