Industry fund urges urgency on DBFO implementation

Major industry fund, Rest has urged the Government to make passage of its financial advice reforms a post-Budget priority arguing they are necessary to provide a pathway for superannuation funds to cost-effectively increase the scope and reach of financial advice.
Rest has used its pre-Budget submission filed with Treasury to state that it believes everyone should be able to access simple, convenient financial advice, “especially lower and middle income Australians like our members”.
The Government has scheduled handing down the Budget on 25 March.
“Many of our members would simply not be able to access advice if it wasn’t available through Rest – so expanding financial advice within super will help more of our members make informed decisions to improve their retirement outcomes,” it said.
“Rest offers digital advice tools, which have allowed us to expand the reach of our financial advice service to our members. The DBFO reforms give us the opportunity to further expand the service we provide our members.”
The Rest submission also recommends the Government legislates to allow superannuation contributions to be made into retirement phase superannuation accounts to reflect the reality that people are moving in and out of retirement.
“Our experience working with our members shows that retirement is a flexible transition, often involving movement out of and back into the workforce, and ongoing work into retirement.
“This reality of working patterns in retirement is inconsistent with the binary nature of the superannuation system, which does not allow contributions to be made to products in the retirement phase,” it said.
“Rest recommends the Government remove the existing prohibition on making contributions to existing account-based pensions (including for retirees aged over 75 years) in order to simplify the system, provide more flexibility and choice for retirees to manage their retirement income streams and reduce the need for multiple superannuation accounts.”
“Industry modelling suggests this change would remove duplicate fees for about 100,000 retirees,” the submission said.
“Rest acknowledges that considerable consultation would be required on such changes to these products but believes that these kinds of innovations to simplify the system and products available that work for the majority of working Australians will lead to better retirement outcomes.”
Reduce the red tape for qualified advisers.
That should be the first and immediate priority.
Industry Super Funds, Jonesy & ALP only care for ISF FUM & ISF funded diverted profits to Union and Bike bosses and political donations to ALP.
Real Advisers are cannon fodder.
They are desperate to have their sales carve out rules for FUM retention passed before the next election. REST should focus more on the abysmal performance of their balanced fund over the long term, 5.6% over the last 10 years. How they keep passing performance tests is beyond me but shows how flawed and biased the test is.