Home ownership and aged care considerations need to be taken into account in assessing what represents a comfortable retirement in Australia, according to major consulting firm, KPMG.
In its submission to the Treasury on defining the purpose of superannuation, KPMG has pointed for a focus on retirement income outcomes and their inter-relationship with the Age Pension.
In doing so, the submission said that there was a need to look beyond the current Association of Superannuation Funds of Australia (ASFA) retirement income adequacy standard and its focus on single and couple units, to one which encompasses broader issues such as home ownership and age care cost considerations.
"If the objective of the superannuation system is to provide income in retirement to substitute or supplement the age pension; then it follows that to achieve this goal the drivers of superannuation balances sufficient to generate adequate income must be addressed," it said.
The submission said this required consideration of measures to boost to boost the contributions of those who due to their circumstances have insufficient retirement incomes," it said.
The KPMG submission then went on to recommend specific measures relating to women and low income earners including the implementation limited exemptions from concessional and non-concessional capping arrangements to allow them to boost their contributions to compensate for broken employment patterns and changed family circumstances including divorce and financial separation.
The lower outlook for inflation has set the stage for another two rate cuts over the first half of 2026, according to Westpac.
With private asset valuations emerging as a key concern for both regulators and the broader market, Apollo Global Management has called on the corporate regulator to issue clear principles on valuation practices, including guidance on the disclosures it expects from market participants.
Institutional asset owners are largely rethinking their exposure to the US, with private markets increasingly being viewed as a strategic investment allocation, new research has shown.
Australia’s corporate regulator has been told it must quickly modernise its oversight of private markets, after being caught off guard by the complexity, size, and opacity of the asset class now dominating institutional portfolios.