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6 July 2025
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Recent regulatory proposals expand the existing scale test to an outcomes test by determining annually whether the fund’s MySuper products are meeting the clients’ best interests. Similar tests can apply to SMSFs.
The top priority for all superannuation funds is improving member engagement, but most need to improve their techniques. It's one way to reduce the leakage of members, especially to SMSFs.
Superannuation members have been getting a great deal, but this is clearly not sustainable, and many superannuation funds are finding their insurance premiums rising significantly.
Revolution in the application of technology to the delivery of financial advice, in all its different forms, is critical if the issues around quality and access are to be meaningfully addressed.
The recent superannuation reforms were just tinkering around the edges of Australia’s retirement savings system challenges. We need far more radical policy changes if our nation is to survive its demographic time bomb.
With Div. 296 looming, is there a smarter way to tax superannuation? This proposes a fairer, income-linked alternative that respects compounding, ensures predictability, and avoids taxing unrealised capital gains.
An ANU study has found that families with at least one super balance over $3 million have average wealth exceeding $19 million - suggesting most are well placed to absorb taxes on unrealised capital gains.
SMSFs have managed to match, or even outperform, larger super funds despite adopting more conservative investment strategies. This looks at how they've done it - and the potential policy implications.
Stockland’s development chief discusses supply constraints, government initiatives and the impact of Japanese-owned homebuilders on the industry. He also talks of green shoots in a troubled property market.
As the US debt ceiling looms, the usual warnings about a potential crash in bond and equity markets have started to appear. Investors can take confidence from history but should keep an eye on two main indicators.
US mega-cap tech stocks have dominated recent returns - but is familiarity distorting judgement? Like the Monty Hall problem, investing success often comes from switching when it feels hardest to do so.
How does a strategy built around systematically buying-and-holding a basket of the market's biggest losers perform? It turns out pretty well, so why don't more investors do it?