Actuaries urge dashboard upgrade

The current dashboards being utilised by financial institutions and superannuation funds to compare superannuation fund performances are technically unsound and need to be upgraded, according to the Actuaries Institute.

The institute has this week urged a major overhaul of the dashboards to provide consumers with more meaningful and transparent information about the risks, returns, and costs of their funds so they can make better informed decisions.

Commenting on the dashboards, Actuaries Institute superannuation practice committee convenor, Andrew Boal said that in a climate where consumers needed more transparency from financial services providers, there was reason for concern that consumers were making decisions affecting their financial future based on information that might not be meaningful to their needs.

"The current dashboards provide limited help to consumers and, in some instances, may even mislead them into making decisions that will ultimately reduce their retirement benefits," he said.

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"Our position is based on a careful review of the current MySuper dashboard structure and we hope that regulators will take notice of our concerns. In particular, the separation of investment fees and costs from administration/advice fees and costs is critical to member understanding of the value they receive from their superannuation fund. Including examples based on several different sized account balances is also important to help members understand the different impact on their retirement savings of dollar based versus asset based fees and costs."

Boal said he believed it was extremely important that policymakers shifted the current focus on the dashboards away from solely short-term investment risks to include a longer term investment risk measure which was far more important to most members.