The Federal Government has been urged to impose a deadline on employers, unions and superannuation funds to ensure members are given choice of fund once industrial agreements expire.
The Financial Services Council (FSC) has used a submission to the Senate Economics Legislation Committee to argue for amendments to the Treasury Laws Amendment (Your Superannuation, Your Choice) Bill 2019 to achieve such a deadline.
While broadly supporting passage of the legislation, the FSC said it needed to be amended “so that all employees on existing or expired agreements must be granted choice of fund by a certain date, for example one year after royal assent, to provide certainty to employers and ensure workers are not disadvantaged”.
The FSC signalled its strong opposition to the grandfathering of existing workplace agreements.
“It should not be acceptable for employees to continue to be disadvantaged by allowing existing agreements to remove employees’ right to choose a superannuation fund,” it said.
“The FSC is concerned that the grandfathering of existing workplace agreements in the Bill is open ended, particularly as enterprise agreements are entitled to continue to operate beyond their nominal expiry date. All employees covered by agreements should be entitled to prospectively exercise choice.”
The FSC said it needed to be noted, however, that its recommendation to enable employees currently covered by an enterprise agreement to exercise choice of fund was only intended to apply prospectively.
“Further, only a subset of employees will take up this option, those who have been wanting to change funds but until now have been prevented from doing so.”
The Future Fund’s CIO Ben Samild has announced his resignation, with his deputy to assume the role of interim CIO.
The fund has unveiled reforms to streamline death benefit payments, cut processing times, and reduce complexity.
A ratings firm has placed more prominence on governance in its fund ratings, highlighting that it’s not just about how much money a fund makes today, but whether the people running it are trustworthy, disciplined, and able to deliver for members in the future.
AMP has reached an agreement in principle to settle a landmark class action over fees charged to members of its superannuation funds, with $120 million earmarked for affected members.
Watch the industry funds and union, start their campaign, complaining how its not fair that they can't keep depleting all the kids accounts
It's not hard to become Australia's largest super fund, when you have legislation in place to ensure you get all the new contributions, from now to eternity