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| Michele Dolin |
Superannuation trustees should be able to work in a more certain regulatory environment, according to the West-Australian fund GESB.
In its submission to the Cooper Review, GESB said the restrictive, complex and changing nature of the regulatory framework governing superannuation affected trustees’ ability to engage members and drive efficiencies that benefit them.
The submission calls for the regulatory and tax environment to be simplified and stabilised. This would reduce administrative complexity and costs, and ease confusion among members.
The super fund suggested that many of its members had difficulty understanding the basics of superannuation such as salary sacrificing, concessional caps, preservation age and transition to retirement. Many members also found the frequent changes to super and tax hard to navigate.
Commenting on the submission, GESB chief executive Michele Dolin said the current framework was more complex and costly than it needed to be. She added that it curbed the capacity of trustees to provide members access to information that helped them build and manage their retirement savings in a cost-effective way.
“We need to strip away unnecessary and inconsistent legislation and ensure that regulatory changes are adopted for the long term,” she said.
