Streamlining regulatory reporting in super could save costs to deliver even stronger retirements for millions of Australians without eroding crucial consumer protections, the Super Members Council says.
As the Government's Economic Reform Roundtable kicks off today, SMC – which advocates for 12 million everyday Australians with savings in profit-to-member super – said regulatory overlap and duplication were adding to system costs for all Australians with super.
The council proposes a new streamlined reporting system – for super data to be lodged with one regulator and other agencies drawing on that data rather than each separately gathering their own.
"We think it's a smarter and more efficient way to ensure strong regulation without lowering standards or compromising crucial consumer protections," said Super Members Council CEO Misha Schubert.
Momentum has gathered over recent weeks to review RG97 – an ASIC guidance on how investment fees and costs are measured – amid concern it is stymying greater investment in productive asset classes like housing and infrastructure that deliver strong returns for members.
The council has welcomed ASIC's plan to review stamp duty reporting under RG97 and called for a thoughtful broader look at how the guidance is affecting overall investment flows.
"RG97 creates a skewed incentive for investors to favour short-term assets or invest via other structures, even when direct investment could generate better long-term investment returns."
"That type of distortion risks members missing out on the highest investment returns, while Australian startups and scale-ups can't access crucial growth capital."
The Productivity Commission should also undertake a timely review of super system efficiency, which it last reviewed eight years ago, to identify further productivity gains.
Other ways to boost efficiency and reduce system costs while keeping strong consumer safeguards include:
- swiftly passing payday super laws to fix $5.7 billion-a-year losses in unpaid super – money legally owed to 3.3 million Australian workers
- boosting the super tax refund for 1.2 million of Australia's lowest-income workers – a reform without which one in three Australian workers will pay more tax on super than on their take-home pay by 2027
- fast-tracking financial advice reforms to give 2.5 million Australians nudges and more simple information and advice to help them prepare for retirement, and
- legislating to digitise binding death nominations in super and nationally standardising ID requirements and death certificates to help speed up payments of death benefits to grieving families.
About us:
The opinions above are those of the author in their capacity as spokesperson for Super Members Council of Australia (SMC). SMC, the authors and all other persons involved in the preparation of this information are thereby not giving legal, financial or professional advice for individual persons or organisations.
