Speaking to InvestorDaily, Association of Superannuation Funds of Australia (ASFA) chief executive Pauline Vamos said government draft regulations requiring MySuper product providers to disclose investment risk, value of fees and performance will benefit the industry, but wants to ensure there is flexibility in its approach.
“We know it’s a hard start date for MySuper and like any disclosure, it needs to be reviewed regularly, but we want to see some flexibility in the regulations as well, so we’ll be trying to build that in,” Ms Vamos said.
“You don’t want disclosure for the sake of disclosure if it doesn’t actually provide any public value.
Ms Vamos said that it is important that there is a review process for disclosure arrangements to ensure they are working and achieving greater transparency for consumers.
“Disclosure is something you’ve got to work through – what it means in terms of cost of developing the disclosure,” Ms Vamos said.
“The algorithms behind the disclosure must reflect your other reporting. We’ve got reporting to [the Australian Securities and Investments Commission], we’ve got reporting to [the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority], we’ve got reporting to the [Australian Taxation Office].
“As the disclosure gets more and more detailed, you don’t want to be reinventing the wheel by having to do different things in different ways because that’s an unfair cost to consumers.”
The Australian Institute of Superannuation Trustees (AIST) also welcomed the arrangements for providing consumers more meaningful information regarding their super fund performance.
AIST chief executive Tom Garcia said the regulations requiring disclosure of portfolio holdings would lead superfunds to be among the most transparent funds globally.
“These new rules will make super more consumer-friendly and will encourage Australians to pay more attention to their super,” Mr Garcia said.
“Importantly, consumers will gain a better understanding of their super fund’s performance and be able to more easily compare one fund to another.”
You can read more about the MySuper product dashboard requirements, announced yesterday, here.
