The Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA) has confirmed that a number of superannuation funds have been “engaged” over payments to third parties such as financial advisers.
The regulator revealed the engagement as part of its outline of its supervisory priorities for 2020, noting that it was area of joint supervisory focus with the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC).
It said that during 2019 both APRA and ASIC had required all trustees to review the robustness of their existing governance and assurance arrangements for fees charged to members’ superannuation accounts.
“APRA and ASIC are engaging with individual trustees on the outcomes of their reviews, ensuring that trustees have credible plans for addressing identified weaknesses in a timely manner,” APRA said. “Industry-level findings will be made public in the first half of 2020.”
APRA said conflicts of interest was another key area of supervisory focus for it in 2020 and that it had begun an “in-depth review of selected large trustees’ management of outsourcing providers, focusing on related party arrangements and managing conflicts of interest”.
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Amazing that APRA & ASIC are trying to prevent payments from super for professional advice that has been provided by a licensed third party. Yet they do nothing to prevent the "intra fund advice" scam that slugs every client in a super fund for advice that is either never provided, or is provided inhouse by unlicensed call centre staff.
Here we go again, more red tape. Advisers will have to fill out a 20 page document each month to collect their adviser fee... If APRA and ASIC are going to pass responsibility to Trustees, then I guess we can do away with FDS and Opt-in because the Trustees will look after it! Ha Ha, no chance.
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