International ratings agency Fitch Ratings has found that most of Australia’s major public listed companies have minimal exposures to unfunded superannuation liabilities.
The agency’s survey of companies in the S&P/ASX 50 Index, shows that only two companies reported unfunded super liability exposures of more than 3 per cent of shareholders’ funds at the time of releasing their most recent annual reports. The liabilities were about 5 to 8 per cent of shareholders’ funds.
Fitch Ratings director Michael Hermans says: “We were aware there had been a significant change from defined benefit to defined contribution, so we surveyed these companies to see if there was any potential issues arising from that in terms of the creditworthiness of funds.”
The Australian findings were quite different to results in Europe where the under-funding of pension liabilities has become an important credit issue.
