In the submission, released yesterday, CBA stated financial literacy is a key component of encouraging investors to make informed decisions about their finances.
CBA recommended financial literacy programs be developed for SMSF trustees to ensure they can assess the economic viability of an SMSF structure for them.
“Potential SMSF trustees should also be able to assess the administrative and financial requirements that come with SMSFs,” the submission stated.
CBA also identified various superannuation regulatory issues to be reviewed by the inquiry, including the need for consistency of regulation across all super funds in light of the growth in the SMSF sector.
“The growing size and importance of the SMSF market suggests Government should ensure regulatory mechanisms are in place to provide appropriate supervision of the sector as a whole,” the submission stated.
“In the longer term, Commonwealth Bank believes an optimal model of regulation involves applying consistent regulatory controls across all funds.”
The government and regulators should also be monitoring a number of “developments”, CBA stated, such as the ability of trustees to make appropriate financial decisions that suit their needs, the ability to enter borrowing arrangements and the size and growth rate of the market.
I see they only recommend training for SMSF’s – but no other sector requires any form of formal training and they look after OTHER peoples money as trustees of master funds etc. Interesting double standard or are we to assume that just because we work for CBA we are properly trained to act as trustee for one of their master trusts?
Recently the CBA advised one of my clients that they could only pay $30,000 into their super fund.
For a start, the client was not eligible to make member concessional contributions.
They had already used up over $10k of the concessional cap from SG contributins.
$30,000 is next years concessional cap, and the client was over 59 so it should have been $35,000 (if they were eligible)
They were however eligible to contribute 3 x non-concessional cap.
And they were eligible to use the CGT cap, which the CBA adviser “HAD NEVER HEARD OF” and requested a letter from us to explain.
Seriously, they could not have made any more errors in the advice they provided.
CBA, take a look at your own advisers and introduce some programs to educate them.
I am all for positive education of trustees but not scaremongering.
And the SMSF bashing by the big boys continues. “In the game of life always back self interest, at least you know its trying” Paul Keating.