A few people have read my earlier post on this subject of 10 year super fund returns and wondered just what point i was making… (thanks for the feedback Neil and others!). The post was primarily aimed at showing the average 10 year return of the average super fund (which was not much over 4%pa) and…
The front page of the Australian Financial Review today (Friday 23rd July) suggests that ‘Balanced’ Funds “have failed to keep pace with investments such as low-risk bonds and gold over the past decade even after posting double-digit gains in the year to June“. If you move on to page 51 to read the balance of…
Far from me to sit on my porch playing the fiddle, while watching the business district i live in being burned to the ground. That once-magnificent newspaper, the Australian Financial Review, yesterday headlined the changes in the financial industry as some institutions move to drop commissions from their products. All very laudable steps. Follow the…
Now it makes a bit more sense… Why had the industry funds been making such a push for banning commissions, to the point where you could argue that their members’ funds were being used to pay for a campaign that didn’t actually improve the position of the members (because their members were already in funds…
Todays Australian Financial Review (p3) carries an artile titled “Super funds warned” in which Jeremy Cooper (“chairman of the federal government’s review of the $1.2 trillion superannuation industry”) suggests that Australian super funds need to increase returns and gain greater scale to increase opportunities. The example given is “Two Canadian pension funds with a combined…
My brother sent this photo yesterday. It is the view from his current workplace, in Laos. Here is my view… Sometimes the hustle and bustle of the day-to-day can stop us from seeing and thinking clearly. When considering money issues, this is the most common cause of mistakes being made. It may sound easy to…
There has been quite a bit of debate in recent times on various clauses in various “Awards” as they relate to superannuation.
Some argue that this takes away “member choice” and that it unfairly promotes “industry funds” (i have not used capital letters, as i have not investigated whether all awards with these provisions specifically relate to funds that are members of the Industry Funds marketing group). However, i would argue that this is in fact a very good basic step to take in many cases….
Just a moment please, while i don my titanium-lined protection suit… Members of the super fund industry are particularly sensitive at the moment, so anything that i may say here will undoubtedly be taken incorrectly, misquoted or distorted in some other way. Previous attempts to bring a bit of plain English to the super funds…
There is currently no specific direction provided by Government regulation (ignoring very specialised situations) on where a super fund must invest money. There is a requirement instead that the Trustee ensured the fund assets are appropriate to meet its obligations to fund members (that’s my interpretation of far more technical wording). Over time there have…
It is a favourite parody scene from some of my favourite comedies – in the midst of a terrible turmoil there is someone runing from pillar to post, pulling out their hair while yelling (usually with an enforced accent), “but what about the baby?” It may be a long bow to draw any similarity but…
