During a panel discussion at the Australian Securitisation Conference in Sydney on Monday, former CBA senior executive and current interim director at the Australian Centre for Financial Studies, Rodney Maddock, argued his case for the “philosophy” of self-funded superannuation.
“The philosophy around SMSFs is that people should be allowed to make their own mistakes,” Mr Maddock said.
“If these people want to lend at 18 per cent to this bloke to start a garage down the road, well, the philosophy of having a self-managed super fund is that people should be allowed to do that,” he said.
“In the self-managed space, I really don’t see a place for the regulators to play strongly as long as information is clearly provided and truthful. That’s the obligation we have to the self-managed sector.”
Fellow panellist Oliver Harvey, ASIC’s senior executive leader of financial market infrastructure, questioned Mr Maddock’s position, pointing to the simplistic view of the “philosophy”.
“There are social implications for a merry band of retirees getting it horribly, horribly wrong,” Mr Harvey said.
“Where that responsibility ultimately ends up in a socio-political environment, it is never quite as simple as saying, ‘Well, I’m sorry you made a couple of bad mistakes at the end of your financial life, I wish you all the best’.”
Mr Maddock said the pension is still available for those with “bad luck”.
Does the amount of time and money spent on regulating super to protect people from themselves
justify the expense of the industry
Thousands of people preparing fund accounts to satisfy certain trivial rules does not seem like ‘
a good use of time .The extra time spent on each fund so a client does not break one rule is
inefficient
The system to monitor it (auditing) is not being regulated properly and can get a cheap job at the expense of people who do the right thing
If we loosen the rules a bit re certain things and super funds take 33% less time to prepare each year
Isn’t the nation ahead – even if some people lose some money though stupid investments
The “missed point” is that you cannot expect tax concessions from an unregulated structure.
Agree, too simplistic, but served the purpose of headline grabbing.