THOSE operating in the financial services space with a Web site should expect a visit from findmysuper.com, the company designed specifically to locate lost superannuation money.
Findmysuper.com is currently rolling out its capabilities to financial planners, effectively enabling financial planners to provide the same service for clients under their own brand.
For a $100 registration fee, planner groups can build a link between themselves and findmysuper.com’s home page, so that findmysuper.com still provides the service, but the information is delivered back to the planner who can then advise the client on their superannuation strategies.
Findmysuper.com searches the Australian Taxation Office’s centralised database of lost members, established in 1996, as well as going further afield to locate lost superannuation monies.
“We are effectively providing the back-office to locate superannuation,” findmysuper.com’s general manager sales, David Smith says.
The last reported figures estimate the amount of lost super in Australia at around $5.9 billion, with this amount increasing by approximately $900 million per year.
Smith says financial planners will be interested in the service for two reasons.
“It enhances the functionality of their Web sites, and many have static sites. And it helps to find other clients,” he says.
Smith says while the service has been operating very successfully since September 2000 as a retail site, the decision to roll out the capability to financial planners was all about volume and approaching financial planners as extra distributors.
Rolling out the service to planners simply involves combing the Yellow Pages and going out and talking to interested parties.
“It takes 10 minutes to tell people about it and it’s a pretty simple message,” Smith says.
On the job for the past month, findmysuper has signed up seven groups, and spoken to between 30 and 40 planning offices.
“I’m very encouraged by their reaction. No one has said they are not going to do it,” Smith says.
