The federal government will allow super funds to offer their members to stay in their default option under an opt-out mechanism, Treasury has flagged.
"Essentially the idea here is that the MySuper product, potentially, is going to look quite different than the [product] they are in at the moment, and the principle here is that they should be given an opportunity that if they don't want to go there, they can decide not to," Treasury superannuation principal adviser Jonathan Rollings said.
Rollings made the remarks at the Association of Superannuation Funds of Australia Super Compliance Summit held in Sydney earlier this week.
He said funds could largely determine themselves where members who had opted out should go, opening the way for those members to remain in the default option.
"Where they remain if they do opt out? I guess this is essentially a matter for the fund," he said.
Under the MySuper legislation, super funds will have to transfer members in their current default option and who have not exercised choice to a MySuper product by July 2017.
But Rollings seemed to flag that members could be given the chance to opt out, thereby essentially exercising choice of fund.
A number of super funds contacted by Investor Weekly said they would have to look at the proposal in detail before they could estimate what the impact of an opt-out mechanism would be.
