Super funds get 12 months’ grace on portfolio holdings
The Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) has needed to take account of another legislative/regulatory time lag by allowing superannuation funds more time to meet their portfolio holdings disclosure requirements.
The regulator has amended a class order to provide legal certainty about the portfolio holdings regulations, noting that it was doing so because “the regulations setting out the required disclosures have not yet been made”.
Superannuation funds were supposed to publish information about their fund’s portfolio holdings on 31 December, this year, but ASIC said that as a result of the regulations being delayed the date had been extended by 12 months to 31 December, 2020.
ASIC noted, however, that it supported greater transparency about funds’ portfolio holdings and was therefore encouraging trustees “to focus on designing web site disclosure about holdings that is accessible and clear for their members”.
It said that a number of funds had already taken steps to increase transparency “even in the absence of an explicit legislative obligation to do so”.
ASIC said that most superannuation trustees, as part of portfolio holdings disclosure requirements, had to provide information about fund holdings on the fund website with the first reporting date to identify the holdings of the fund meant to be 31 December 2019, with disclosure required on the trustee’s website no later than 90 days from that date.
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