While the relief from minimum account-based pension draw-down requirements was a positive development, it will not help those individuals in pension phase whose existing pension income represents the level of income they need to live on, SuperConcepts technical manager Graeme Colley said.
To demonstrate his point he used an example of a man aged 61 who had an existing pension income of $40,000 per annum.
As per the relief announced by the government on Wednesday this person could drop his pension income to a level of $20,000.
However, if he really needed $40,000 income a year to exist, taking advantage of relaxed rules would not help him.
"It would seem to me that the people who have larger balances in superannuation funds ... are probably going to benefit the most mainly because they may have reasonable stores of cash," Colley said.
"The volatility in their equities portfolio they can live with, without needing to sell those investments, and just draw down from the cash.
"I see that is where the real benefit is going to come out of these rules," he said.
In addition, a lot of people in pension mode may have already drawn down more than half of their existing minimum amount, potentially limiting the effectiveness of the new relief provision.
"The only people the announcement on Wednesday is going to benefit are those people who haven't drawn out at least half of that minimum amount," Colley said.
"It's only those people that maybe draw a pension on a yearly basis, or those that haven't needed the money so far and were thinking of drawing it out but don't really need that money now."
