Adequacy benchmark crucial to post-retirement

The Financial Systems Inquiry should actively consider the introduction of an “adequacy benchmark” to inform Australians of how well they are prepared for retirement, according to Australian Institute of Superannuation Trustees (AIST) policy adviser Karen Volpato. 

Addressing the Super Review Post-Retirement and Ageing Forum in Sydney today, Volpato acknowledged that such an “adequacy benchmark” represented a central element of the AIST submission to the Financial Systems Inquiry and said she believed there needed to be a nationally-accepted definition of retirement incomes adequacy. 

She said this was needed in circumstances where superannuation fund members most commonly wanted to know how much super they actually had and how much it would actually get them in retirement. 

Volpato said that the bottom line was that while Australia had developed an almost incomparable system with respect to the accumulation of superannuation, it needed to move to appropriately develop a post-retirement regime. 

In doing so, she said Government and the industry needed to also take account of health and welfare issues associated with the ageing.