ACT Super Management is preparing another application for government financial assistance after examinations into the losses suffered by select Trio Capital (Trio) funds increased to around $65.5 million.
In a letter to members of four failed Trio funds, ACT Super Management director Shane O’Keeffe revealed that during the recalculations of investors’ losses to finalise payment of compensation monies to select investors, a shortfall of around $10.5 million was discovered.
“As a result of the recalculations, the losses suffered by the Trio funds have increased from approximately $55.0 million to approximately $65.5 million,” O’Keeffe said in the letter, dated 8 February.
The increase is largely represented by the additional costs of the various acting trusteeships through to their estimated completion, he said.
“ACT Super is currently preparing a further application for a Part 23 grant of financial assistance to the Minister [for Financial Services Bill Shorten] for the additional losses of $10.5 million,” he said.
“To the extent that the Minister approves this amount, the ultimate compensation received, including interest of approximately $1.7 million, will be in the order of $67.2 million.”
O’Keeffe said the compensation monies were recalculated to reflect a number of factors.
The first factor was that the orginal amount claimed was an estimate of the losses that had been suffered by the Trio funds whereas the finalised compensation payments needed to be determined on a member-by-member basis.
The second factor centred around the fact that the original application only claimed expenses from 16 December 2009 to 31 December 2010 and needed to be updated to reflect actual costs incurred since that date and estimated costs to the completion of the acting trusteeships.
Last week, Shorten announced more than 5300 Australians would receive their share of compensation money as of 8 February, with funds progressively credited to members’ superannuation accounts over the next two weeks.
“The time it has taken to finalise payment to members reflects the inherent complexities of the Trio case, including the need to re-calculate member balances to replace the fictitious Trio returns with an alternative unit price based on a fair and reasonable return,” Shorten said at the time.
The payment was a “good outcome” for the investors in Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA)-regulated funds, who were defrauded of their superannuation in the collapse of Trio, he said.
The government granted more than $54 million in financial assistance to benefit the members of four APRA-regulated superannuation funds that were formally under the trusteeship of Trio.
The assistance was granted under part 23 of the Superannuation Industry (Supervision) Act 1993 and is for members of the Astarra Superannuation Plan, Astarra Personal Pension Plan, My Retirement Plan and Employers Federation of NSW Superannuation Plan.
