Furlan warns on SCT funding

The Superannuation Complaints Tribunal (SCT) needs to be more accountable to the superannuation industry and its other stakeholders, according to its outgoing chairperson, Jocelyn Furlan.

With the Tribunal having in the past 18 months moved further under umbrella of the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC), Furlan used her final editorial in the SCT's quarterly bulletin to point to the need for better funding and a closer alignment with the superannuation industry.

The SCT last year found itself being collocated with the ASIC in Melbourne.

Furlan used her final editorial to point to the fact that the SCT's resources had been reduced in the current financial year and that there was a risk that this could lead to a backlog of complaints.

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"The Tribunal must secure adequate resources to deliver on its objectives, and the transparency of the funding arrangements and the Tribunal's accountability to the superannuation industry and other stakeholders need to be enhanced," she said.

"The resources made available to the Tribunal for 2014-15 were decreased by 14 per cent from those available in 2013-14, compared with an increase, as at 31 December 2014, of 18 per cent in the number of complaints received compared to the previous year," Furlan wrote.

"It is important that the Tribunal is adequately resourced, otherwise the backlog of complaints, which has been so successfully reduced, will build up again."