While self-managed super funds (SMSFs) are representative of a massive opportunity for many within the super industry, there are also a host of providers looking to the sector for exactly the wrong reasons, according to Paul Schroder, general manager – growth and new opportunities for AustralianSuper.
“They’re thinking of SMSFs as some sort of honey pot or some sort of opportunity for them, as an institution, to harvest, to make money from,” he said.
“But I think what’s very entertaining to watch is those big operations who think they’ll have some knock out, scalable solution for what is completely a fragmented, individually driven, very localised superannuation response.”
Schroder said that SMSFs were undoubtedly a significant innovation with respect to retirement savings, but they also tended to be very adviser- and individual-driven.
“Yet you then get these large organisations saying ‘gee, I can see there’s a third of the money in there, I’d better get in there, this is a really great opportunity’ and it simply doesn’t make sense to me,” he said.
For Schroder, it is vital that all within the industry understand exactly why people went down the SMSF path in the first place.
“Some of them might have had something sold to them and some might even have been told something that isn’t quite right, but most of them probably went down that path because they actually wanted to do it themselves,” he said.
“They wanted to do it without the big providers.
“So it’s sort of strange to say ‘you left our party so we’re going to chase you until you come back to it’ – that just doesn’t make sense to me.”
