Have fund boards ignored lessons from the SCT?

One of the longest-serving members of the Superannuation Complaints Tribunal (SCT),  barrister Noel Davis, has resigned his position but has taken a shot at some superannuation fund boards which he says have failed to address shortcomings identified in Tribunal determinations.

In an analysis to be published in the upcoming edition of Super Review, Davis said that while some super funds boards took note of Tribunal decisions and changed their practices, others did not.

“My experience is that, in some other funds, the decisions and the comments in them are often ignored by the directors of the trustee,” he said.

“I am also aware that, in some funds, the directors are not told of decisions of the tribunal that relate to that fund,” Davis said. “Consequently, the same problems continue to crop [up] in those funds.”

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He said some of the largest funds, including government funds, were often the culprits.

“The result is that the directors of the trustees of those funds are not properly fulfilling their functions,” Davis said.

Elsewhere in his analysis, Davis noted the transition from the SCT to the new Australian Financial Complaints Authority (AFCA) and said that many of the criticisms of the SCT’s performance and delays in hearing cases were “largely attributable to the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC)”.

“Those delays are, largely, attributable to ASIC (which is responsible for funding the tribunal) having seriously underfunded the tribunal over recent years which has resulted in delays of sometimes two to three years in the tribunal hearing cases from when a complaint was made to the tribunal,” Davis said. “That is additional to any delays in decision making by trustees and insurers.”

He said AFCA was not likely to suffer from the same underfunding and delays that had affected the work of the tribunal because AFCA would receive payments directly from superannuation funds of amounts that AFCA determined.