ASIC puts super trustees on notice

Superannuation trustees are on notice from the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) to improve their internal dispute resolution systems after a targeted review of trustee compliance.

This found some trustees had sub-standard arrangements for managing complaints.

ASIC selected 35 trustees for an initial review, followed by a more detailed review of a subset of 10 trustees.  Each fund had at least 50,000 members and predominantly over $10 billion in assets as at 30 June 2021 while the chosen subset funds had approximately $361 billion in assets across 5.1 million member accounts.

Regarding timings, ASIC said a number of trustees failed to respond within the maximum timeframe of 45 days and failed to complainants informed. Too many written responses omitted mandatory content relating taking the matter to the Australian Financial Complaints Authority (AFCA) and trustees’ internal reporting lacked sufficient details to identify deficiencies in complaints handling.

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ASIC said there had also been a ‘missed opportunity’ for trustees to improve and detect issues with member complaints which could have improved their products and services, benefitting membership.

Danielle Press, ASIC commissioner, said: “Superannuation fund members have a right to make complaints to their fund and to expect their complaints to be handled fairly and in a timely manner. Yet, our review found trustees have fallen short.

“We saw examples of trustees’ failure to comply with fundamental obligations, which could lead to poor outcomes, such as consumers abandoning a complaint rather than seeing it through. While a few trustees did the right thing, in many cases there were serious deficiencies in trustees’ dispute resolution processes and how they monitored and responded to complaints.”

ASIC was writing to these trustees about issues specific to their compliance with RG 271 and they would be required to take prompt action to remedy the issues identified. The majority would need to report to ASIC on improvements made.

ASIC was also considering other regulatory action where more serious concerns were identified.