Employers pushed to sort super
Some surprise reforms for the super system were announced in this week’s Budget.
The changes appear to make it easier to choose between funds and potentially avoid unnecessary fees.
It is common for new super accounts to be automatically created when a person changes jobs. But this often leads to people having multiple accounts, and so multiple sets of fees and multiple sets of insurance.
Around 4.5 million Australians currently have multiple accounts, and pay a total of $450 million a year in extra fees.
The new changes require employers to find their new employees’ accounts through the ATO and pay their super into it.
The Federal Government is also working on a new online comparison tool called YourSuper, which will provide a table of super funds ranked by fees and returns.
Additionally, the prudential regulator APRA has been tasked with identifying poor performers in the super industry through a new annual benchmarking test.