Ideology driving industry fund governance reform, says panel

Union and industry fund figures have pushed back at suggestions that industry fund board governance needs reform — as well as a mandated 50 per cent quota of independent directors.

Such suggestions constitute an ideological attack on the union movement and have nothing to do with governance, ACTU president Ged Kearney told the Conference of Major Superannuation Funds 2013.

"There are people out there in the political world that can't stand the idea that ... unions actually have some say over these billions of dollars that are out there in the market," she said.

Kearney questioned the competence and appointment of directors to retail fund boards and said super was an industrial relations issue. The whole system was started by unions, she added.

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"It's thanks to unions right now and to our bargaining and our hard work that here are all these billions of dollars in superannuation — this is an industrial relations issue," she said.

Industry Funds Management chair Garry Weaven said in an "immature act of hostility" the Opposition had singled out industry funds in an amendment to MySuper legislation that imposed a one-third independent trustee requirement.

He said the Government was targetting the best-performing sector whilst leaving the worst-performing sector alone. Policies should be reflective of performance data, Weaven said.

AustralianSuper chief executive Ian Silk said he agreed it was a political argument and unrelated to governance.

He cited APRA data from 2010 that found industry and retail funds shared similar costs when dealing with external providers, but retail funds costs blew out when dealing with related parties.

"Now that brings empirical data writ large that there is a governance issue in this industry — it's not from the industry funds sector, it's most squarely in the retail sector," he said.

Australian Institute of Superannuation Trustees president Cate Wood said 99 per cent of industry fund directors would meet the corporate test of independence, and although the Cooper Review had been touted as the authority on board governance models, an OECD report supported the representational model as better able to resolve conflicts of interest.

She said the union movement was about the best interest of members while the financial services sector was about making a profit.

"What would concern me is that you would remove that absolute complete best interests of workers from the panel," she said.

The Industry Super Network (ISN) today cited SuperRating's latest super fund performance data to back the equal representation model.

An ISN analysis into APRA data found 38 of the 40 top-performing funds had an equal representational model — while 35 of the worst-performing 40 funds did not, it said.