Treasurer rules out further super changes
Future reforms to superannuation appear to be off the table, as the Treasurer sets his eyes on the fintech scene.
Speaking at the FSC BT Political Series, Treasurer Scott Morrison said revisiting changes to superannuation was not the way he preferred to “do business”.
“I hope people will pick up one thing from the way I like to do business,” said Mr Morrison.
“Once I go into a particular area and seek to make change, I seek to do it once and for all. I tend not to go and revisit it.
“We made some major changes to superannuation, I've made some major changes in previous portfolios on pensions, made major changes on childcare, made major changes in immigration, [and] haven't had to revisit any of these,” he added.
“On the banking and financial system, whether it's what we're doing with the financial complaints authority, all of these changes which we've been working on over the last couple of years, we are bringing to a resolution and we think it addresses the concerns that Australians have.”
Mr Morrison also urged the industry to embrace fintech as it would usher in a new era of productivity across various businesses both inside and outside the financial sector in Australia.
“The technology is exciting, it can be distracting, it can sometimes, if not often, over promise and under deliver. But at the same time it is very hard not to appreciate the potential,” said Mr Morrison.
“When you've got the ASX looking to establish the first blockchain settlement house in the world, that's a pretty exciting thing for Australia to be doing, when you look that we'll have our new real-time payments platform active and operational by the end of next January, when you consider that we will have in place the world's most forward leaning regulatory sandbox for fintech development, the pieces of the puzzle are coming together for financial services revolution in this country.
“And the big winner will be the customers; the big winners will be greater security and resilience in the system because the technology affords that as well.”
Similarly, FSC chief executive Sally Loane said adopting fintech would be crucial to managing the expectations of future generations.
“Those millennials, they will judge often what we do as they judge Uber and Deliveroo, they want the same service, they want it digital, and I think that's a really important point,” Ms Loane said.
“Humans are at the heart of it too, you can't just have robo-advice and all the great things on digital; you've got to have humans behind there and that's what I think we do extremely well in financial services, we grow those humans, we are one of the fastest growing and biggest sector of our economy."
