The Australian Institute of Superannuation Trustees (AIST) has welcomed the announcement from the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) with regards to extended transition periods for key fee and cost disclosure requirements.
According to AIST’s chief executive, Eva Sheerlinck, this would help ensure more consistency around new requirements and therefore would offer more value to consumers.
ASIC further extended the deadline for PDS disclosure of property operating costs to 29, September, 2020, which would effectively give the industry an extra 12 months on the existing deadline.
Also, ASIC said it extended the deadline for disclosure on periodic statements and super funds would be able to continue to use the interim arrangements for disclosure of buy/sell spreads, tax deductions and borrowing costs up until 29 June, 2020.
“While a lot of time and effort has already been spent on developing these disclosure requirements, it is clear that more work is needed to get them right,” Scheerlinck said.
“Improving fee and cost disclosure in superannuation is vitally important both for consumers and regulators, but poor disclosure is not going to help anyone and could lead to serious unintended consequences.”
AIST also announced that it would continue to urge ASIC to:
- Extend the new disclosure requirements to provide transparency and comparability for members of both MySuper and Choice products
- Provide greater comparability of fund performance, recognising that consumers need a better understanding of the important role of net returns in maximising their retirement outcome
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