NULIS Nominees (Australia) has had additional registrable superannuation entity licence conditions imposed on it by the Australian Prudential and Regulation Authority (APRA) following an investigation referred to it by the Hayne Royal Commission.
The directions and extra licence conditions aimed to improve its governance and control environment, and ensure members’ best interests were prioritised in its decision-making.
The Royal Commission formed a view that NULIS may not have made decisions in the best interests of members in relation to the migration of certain cohorts of its members into MySuper products, grandfathering certain fee arrangements, and the charging of fees to members for services that were not provided.
The directions and additional licence conditions required NULIS to:
- Record how it considers members’ best interests and priority covenants when making decisions that materially affect their interests. This measure will improve NULIS’s practices and ensure APRA is better able to assess whether members’ best interests were being sufficiently considered and prioritised by NULIS in future; and
- Address prudential concerns APRA identified in its supervision of NULIS, corroborated in an independent report undertaken by Deloitte. NULIS will be required to undertake timely remediation by implementing improvements in its governance and control environment and appointing an independent expert to report on compliance with its licence conditions.
APRA did not conclude that NULIS breached the Superannuation Industry (Supervision) Act 1993.
