Industry superannuation fund body, Industry Super Australia (ISA) has called on the Government to defer the implementation of RG97 dealing with fee and cost disclosures until it can guarantee full disclosure by reversing the exemptions on platforms and intermediary trusts investing in real property or infrastructure.
ISA chief executive, David Whiteley on Friday claimed the new RG97 regime would make it impossible for consumers to compare super fund fees and costs giving bank-owed and other retail super funds another leg up by failing to capture investment platforms.
He claimed that RG97 contained inexplicable carve-outs such as the exclusion of investments via platforms.
“These carve-outs make it almost impossible to achieve consistent and accurate fee and cost disclosure, denying investors the opportunity to accurately compare the products available to them and determine whether a particular product represents value for money,” Whiteley said.
“In its current form, RG97 will create perverse incentives for super funds to change the way they invest, using the carve outs to hide costs,” he said.
