The corporate watchdog late last month announced it would commence legal action against Commonwealth Bank of Australia, Bank of Queensland and Macquarie Bank over their involvement in the Storm Financial collapse.
The Storm debacle blew out two years ago, wiping out the retirement savings of thousands of people.
The banks involved in this debacle are all publicly listed companies. The boards of these publicly listed companies are supposed to comply with a number of governance standards that come with being a listed firm.
The not-for-profit superannuation sector adopts a representative trustee model that includes an equal representation of employer and employee trustee directors.
So far this model has worked. The not-for profit sector has not had the high number of corporate collapses typified by corporate Australia, if any at all.
For some reason, Jeremy Cooper, the former chair of the Cooper review, felt it was time to revamp the trustee model.
Cooper recommended a number of changes where it will no longer be mandatory for trustee boards to adopt equal representation in selecting trustee directors.
As a representative of the not-for-profit superannuation group, the Australian Institute of Superannuation Trustees (AIST), chief executive Fiona Reynolds says no other system of governance has been effective in serving the interests of people's retirement savings.
AIST argues that research from the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority has shown the not-for-profit sector has consistently outperformed retail funds by 2 per cent to 3 per cent. The research suggested the sector's governance model, that is, the representative trustee model, had contributed to this superior performance.
AIST is now currently pushing the government to implement this representative trustee model within MySuper.
It will be of interest to see whether the government adopts this position.
