The Australian Institute of Superannuation Trustees (AIST) has created a new department for governance and professional standards.

The new department will be led by Eva Scheerlinck, who has been appointed to the newly-created role of trustee governance and professional standards manager.

Scheerlink is a former chief executive of the Australian Lawyers Alliance and a previous member of the Standards Committee Australia,  advising on open disclosure in healthcare.

Her first priority will be to respond to the federal government's response to the Cooper review.

"From there we want to put together policies, because there aren't a lot of formal industry policies in place around governance," AIST chief executive Fiona Reynolds said.

The AIST will also look to diversify its training services to increase professional standards in the industry.

"We want to expand our training and the depth or our training as well," Reynolds said.

"You've got people who are in the industry for a long time and who have been trustees for a long time. They need more advanced training to those that are just starting.

"So [there will be] more differences between the kinds of levels of training that we do. I think that now that the industry is getting bigger and bigger there are all kinds of different roles in superannuation funds than 10 years ago. We need to try to cater for those people as well.

"We want people who work in the industry to feel that they are part of the profession and that they can work their way into a number of jobs and have a career path within superannuation."

She said governance and professional standard issues were likely to increase in importance as superannuation funds continued to grow.
 
"As the contributions that come into superannuation become bigger and bigger, as we finally come to 12 per cent [superannuation guarantee], the weight of money that will keep coming into the system here is going to be very large and we need to, as an industry, ensure that we have all the right frameworks in place - the right governance, that members' interests are looked after and to make sure that the members' funds are being protected," she said.

"We are not suggesting that funds are not doing the right thing now, but we all think it is an area that we can improve on."

The creation of the new department was partly based on a survey of members, she said.

"We did an extensive member engagement this year to find out what our members thought were the important key issues going forward and we identified that we needed to do more in the area of governance and more in the area of professional standards in the industry," she said.

"There were also a lot of governance issues that were highlighted in the Cooper review."

The AIST also appointed Richard Webb as professional standards and compliance analyst in the new department.