Funds need greater clarity around Trio collapse: ASFA

The Federal Government may have taken the advice of industry associations when implementing the final levy to compensate victims of the Trio collapse, but concerns about transparency still persist.

The Minister for Financial Services and Superannuation Bill Shorten said the revised levy would lift the maximum amount payable from $500,000 to $750,000 for funds with over $5.57 billion in assets to ensure fairer distribution.

The applicable rate will also be lowered from 0.01977 to 0.01347 to reduce the burden on smaller funds.

But the Association of Superannuation Funds of Australia (ASFA) said that while it is good to see certainty, the industry had no sense of the legal proceedings, nor did it have any transparency about how quickly money would be paid to members.

ASFA chief executive Pauline Vamos said the levy should never have had to happen in the first place.

“Where is ASIC? Where is APRA? Where is the announcement by the government on the process to determine what happened? The industry and fund members are entitled to know this,” she said.

“When you are a regulated fund you sign up for this, but truly, this is going to have a big impact on many funds’ accounts. It’s going to have a big impact on the bottom lines of funds and no-one is asking should this have happened anyway in the first place,” Vamos said.