With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility

With 172 billion dollars sitting in Australian industry super funds it was no surprise to see investment managers and service providers flock to the Gold Coast last week for the annual Conference of Major Superannuation Funds.

Fund managers, administrators, lawyers and a myriad of other interested parties ventured to Queensland with the aim of meeting clients and prospects and participating in the annual CMSF pilgrimage of industry fund executives and trustees.

The theme was, Super For Life – An Unfinished Symphony.

Yet the message was something you might hear Spiderman’s Uncle Ben lecturing the bespeckled Peter Parker, namely that “with great power comes great responsibility.”

And that was the message being put forward by Industry Fund Services chief executive Garry Weaven.

Weaven noted that with super now cracking though the symbolic $1 trillion milestone new obligations were now being thrust on the industry.

Among these Weaven suggested the industry must take a leading role on a number of hot topics such as Australia’s role in reducing greenhouse gas emissions, partnering with business to improve the nation’s lagging infrastructure and called on the industry to reduce costs and fees to help improve retirement adequacy for millions of Australians.

Industry funds, according to APRA, now stand at 75 entities and hold a collective $172 billion in assets and are growing in influence by the day.

The Federal Treasurer Peter Costello indicated earlier this week that the nation is better placed now than it was five years ago in meeting the retirement needs of many Australians, however as the CMSF slogan pointed out – this is an ongoing task and there are a number of issues that the industry needs to focus on.

These are education and adequacy - chiefly in terms of growing awareness among people as to how much they will require in retirement to allow them to live the way they are expecting.

Although adequacy for a portion of Australians is unlikely to be a problem with self managed super fund assets approaching a quarter of a trillion dollars ($234 billion) – the challenge is helping and educating low balance super members.