Royal Commission receives influx of complaints about super
Around 17 per cent of the submissions received by the Royal Commission into banking, superannuation and the financial services industry so far relate to matters involving superannuation.
In the initial public hearing for the Royal Commission, senior counsel assisting the commission Rowena Orr QC said out of the 385 submissions received through the online form on the commission’s website, 49 per cent relate to banking, 18 per cent relate to superannuation, 6 per cent relate to the general insurance market and 6 per cent relate to the total permanent disability insurance market.
The online form requested anyone making a submission to describe the nature of the dealing to which their submission is related. Of the responses received up till now, the majority refer to personal finance at approximately 31 per cent, superannuation at 17 per cent, small business finance at 13 per cent, mortgage brokers at 12 per cent and financial advice at 9 per cent.
The online form also asked the person making the submission to nominate the part of the commission’s terms of reference that their submission relates to.
“We have seen already that many of the submissions relate to more than one part of the terms of reference. To date approximately, 84 per cent of submissions relate to misconduct or conduct of financial service entities that falls below community standards, 40 per cent relate to culture and governance practices of financial services entities, and 35 per cent relate to the effectiveness of redress for consumers,” said Ms Orr.
“In relation to the effectiveness of redress, we have seen a large number of submissions that express frustration and concern about the time taken and effort required to navigate the internal and external dispute resolution frameworks that apply to financial services entities.”
Miranda Brownlee
Miranda Brownlee is the deputy editor of SMSF Adviser, which is the leading source of news, strategy and educational content for professionals working in the SMSF sector.
Since joining the team in 2014, Miranda has been responsible for breaking some of the biggest superannuation stories in Australia, and has reported extensively on technical strategy and legislative updates.
Miranda also has broad business and financial services reporting experience, having written for titles including Investor Daily, ifa and Accountants Daily.
