Industry funds hypocritical on vertical integration

Industry superannuation funds were guilty of hypocrisy when they attacked the vertically integrated nature of financial services companies, according to Fiducian head platform services, Patrick Jackson.

Jackson told the Fiducian annual conference on Friday that while industry funds had been attacking vertical integration for a long time, this overlooked the vertically-integrated nature of their own operations.

"Industry funds are as vertically-integrated as anyone else," he said.

Jackson also questioned the validity of the industry funds' advertising campaign, arguing that while they had been allowed to advertise to create scale, this had not necessarily been translated into lower fees for industry fund members.

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"There advertising campaigns are pretty negative and I believe they are designed to kill off competitors," he said.

However Jackson said he believed attacks on business models were misconceived.

"The problem is really not business models," he said. "The problem resides in issues such as poor compliance, sales culture, poor administration and improper remuneration structures."