The reduction in the superannuation drawdown rate for another 12 months will enable retirees to cope better with the volatility in investment markets, SMSF Association deputy chief executive Peter Burgess says.
The move, which extends the temporary reduction until June 2023, was reported late last week by Nine News.
The Morrison government first introduced a reduction in the minimum annual payment required for account-based pensions, annuities and market-linked pensions during the pandemic in 2020 and extended the measure for 12 months last year.
For clients with APRA-regulated funds, Mr Burgess said it was worth keeping an eye on any communications the client received from the fund explaining how they would apply the measure.
“Planners will need to work with their clients to determine whether the minimum pension still meets their client’s income needs,” he said.
“In most cases, where you have previously chosen the minimum pension amount, the fund will automatically apply the 50 per cent reduction, so it’s a matter of assessing whether [it] still meets their needs with regards to cost of living pressures and the like.”
If the client did require more than the minimum, they might need to notify their fund that they required more, he said.
While this was typically more an issue for clients with APRA-regulated super funds, he said, SMSF clients with larger SMSF administrators might also need to do the same.
“They may need to notify the administrator if they want to take more than the minimum amount,” he said.
For SMSF clients who did require more than the minimum, Mr Burgess said it might be worth reducing their pension to the minimum drawdown rate and supplementing their income with commutations as that could help maximise their transfer balance cap.
“That can be important if their client is looking to start another pension or could be a beneficiary of a reversionary pension in the future,” he said.
Hello Ron, the ‘standard’ drawdown rates are designed so that retirees drawdown their income over their life expectancy, not ‘as quickly as possible’. If you look at the stats lots of retirees are dying with ‘considerable’ pension balances, so they are not spending. Current government settings encourage retirees to push non super investments into the tax advantaged super environment, but not to spend it. Drawdown rates may need to be reviewed but let’s not pretend that this fourth year of ‘volatile’ markets merits continuation of the 50% reduction.
A more appropriate adjustment, in view of extremely low interest rates, would be to actuarially review (downward) the current minimum withdrawal interest rates.. These rates were set when life expectancy
was lower than it is today. However high minimum withdrawal rates are consistent with Government policy to run down super balances as quickly as possible