Australians are being urged to check their super accounts after shocking cases emerged of retirement savings being almost completely wiped out by excessive fees.<\/p>\n
The corporate watchdog has revealed that some super trustees failed to detect huge charges, risky account switching and other warning signs that left members thousands of dollars out of pocket.<\/p>\n
In one alarming case, a person\u2019s entire retirement nest egg was virtually erased.<\/p>\n
\u201cOne member, for example, had almost 100 per cent of their balance eroded by fees \u2014 inappropriate fees that weren\u2019t picked up by the trustee,\u201d ASIC Commissioner Simone Constant said.<\/p>\n
\u201cAlmost 100 per cent of their balance.\u201d<\/p>\n
In another case, members using a particular financial advice model lost, on average, half of their super to fees.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s pretty harmful stuff,\u201d Ms Constant said.<\/p>\n
The warning follows the collapse of Shield and First Guardian, which is estimated to have cost more than 11,000 Australians about $1 billion in retirement savings.<\/p>\n
ASIC found too many super trustees were focused on preserving relationships with financial advisers instead of protecting members\u2019 money.<\/p>\n
It also uncovered alarmingly high advice fee caps, with one trustee allowing charges of up to $25,000 and another seeking approval for a $30,000 cap.<\/p>\n
Three trustees had no upper dollar limit on some percentage-based fees, leaving the door open for massive deductions from members\u2019 accounts.<\/p>\n
ASIC has warned trustees that they face tougher scrutiny after releasing its 29-page report into how retirement savings are being protected.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ll be going deeper, we\u2019ll probably be even more public about names and profiling practices, and we won\u2019t be backing away from enforcement outcomes too,\u201d Ms Constant said.<\/p>\n
She urged Australians to pay closer attention to their superannuation.<\/p>\n
\u201cSuperannuation is so important to almost every working Australian now that we\u2019re encouraging Australians to engage with your super as you do with your banks,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Australian super platforms manage almost $300 billion, with advice fees totalling $2.2 billion.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Australians are being urged to check their super accounts after shocking cases emerged of retirement savings being almost…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":550330,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[114,268,85,46,231,43,266,267],"class_list":["post-550329","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-personal-finance","tag-business","tag-finance","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-lifestyle","tag-news","tag-personal-finance","tag-personalfinance"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/550329","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=550329"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/550329\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/550330"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=550329"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=550329"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=550329"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}