Hedge Clippings was in Melbourne earlier this week, and amongst other things attended Super Ratings' Annual Superannuation Fund Conference and Awards. As our readers would know, Hedge Clippings and www.fundmonitors.com has a focus on the managed fund sector, rather than superannuation funds, but for obvious reasons there's a strong alignment, or at least a common area of interest, between the two.
It was, as usual, a well organised, informative and interesting event. Labelled the Super Ratings "Day of Confrontation", it featured presentations from the CEO of Richmond Football Club, and also the new Assistant Treasurer, the Hon. Stuart Robert MP, who looked and sounded somewhat familiar. Although yours truly couldn't quite place him, we put that down to his relatively recent appointment following the unfortunate shenanigans within the Liberal Party.
Mr Robert was certainly forthright, and a strong proponent of choice when it came to employees being able to select where their superannuation contributions were directed. Just as well, for we also heard there are 622 superannuation products available in Australia and NZ, that 28% of accounts have balances of less than $10,000, and that one quarter of them are unsustainable.
As one of the panel speakers commented, 40% of the population have literacy levels that make understanding issues difficult, and financial illiteracy levels are double that. One was left wondering if member choice is actually a good thing, but as the majority of those in the room were from industry super funds, Hedge Clippings thought it wise not to raise that question - at least not out loud.
Mr Robert seemed to be on a verbal roll (he is a politician after all), but then surprisingly seemed to contradict himself by saying the best place to have been invested over the past 10 years would have been in an ASX Index ETF, which of course requires no active investment skills at all and would have lost 6% in October alone. This point was no doubt not well received by the assembled audience of award winning super fund managers and trustees, but we assume they too were too polite to question his judgement in this regard.
However, while we all like the idea of choice, it is not necessarily beneficial, particularly taking some of the points above; 622 products is one hell of a choice, especially if financial literacy is at best a rare commodity, and more than a quarter of accounts have balances of less than $10,000. One would have thought all those accounts could be collectively managed by the Future Fund, at minimal cost (or zero fees), whose returns have been close to double that of the average industry or for-profit super fund.
As noted above, we had trouble placing the strongly opinionated Assistant Treasurer, the Hon Stuart Robert. However, he seemed to pop up all over the place later in the week at all sorts of presentations and events, all in front (and centre) of the media. Eventually Uncle Google came to our rescue with this link.
He's the MP with a Masters Degree in Information Technology who has been charging the tax payer around $2,000 a month in home internet usage, totalling almost $38,000. We presume he had a choice of internet service provider, but judging by the cost, didn't do his research very well.
