Welcome to the latest issue of the KHQ Super Alert. It was a quieter week in superannuation this week, with APRA publishing a recent joint speech with ASIC in relation to the retirement income covenant, and the ATO releasing its corporate plan for this financial year.
APRA – Joint speech with ASIC in relation to retirement income covenant
On 17 August 2022, APRA published a speech delivered jointly by its Executive Director of Superannuation, Suzanne Smith, as well as the Senior Executive Leader for Superannuation at ASIC, Jane Eccleston. The speech related to the recent release of retirement income strategies by superannuation funds. Comments from Ms Smith and Ms Eccleston included:
- ‘[t]his is a challenging space for many trustees and the process of responding to this challenge will take time’;
- ‘the emphasis is really on ensuring that retirement outcomes are sufficiently prioritised and considered in existing frameworks and ways of operating. Trustees might need to shift their mindset in relation to the retirement needs of their members but this doesn’t mean they will need to make wholesale changes to the way they run their business’;
- ‘trustees are at different phases of their implementation of the covenant, and have different starting points’; and
- ‘[s]ome of the summaries were more detailed than others, more readable from a member perspective, or easier to find on the fund’s website’.
APRA and ASIC will shortly ‘conduct a joint thematic review of the retirement income strategies of a sample of trustees from across the industry’.
Click here for details.
ATO – 2022/23 Corporate Plan
On 17 August 2022, the ATO released its corporate plan for the 2022/23 financial year. In terms of superannuation, the ATO has acknowledged that it needs to “sustain effective regulation, administration and stewardship, given cumulative changes to an already complex system, increased stakeholder expectations and competing organisational priorities”. This is being managed through the ATO “[b]uilding strong relationships with key participants [which] enables [it] to identify and address issues proactively, improving [the] ability to meet core responsibilities, deliver change and influence improvements over time”.
The report also includes various statistics for the 2020/21 financial year which have now become available such as:
- $661.6 million of payments were made in relation to the Low Income Superannuation Tax Offset; and
- $120.2 million was paid under the Superannuation Co-contribution Scheme.
Click here for details.
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