Complaint process crucial to super credibility: ASIC

Australia’s corporate regulator has emphasised why superannuation trustees must prioritise treatment of its members with complaints to build confidence in Australia’s superannuation system.  

Speaking at the Association of Superannuation Funds Australia (ASFA) Conference in Brisbane, Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) Commissioner Danielle Press highlighted the regulator’s sustained focus on the treatment of super fund members over the next year.

“Our work has a very strong focus on the interactions members have with [their] fund,” she said.

“It’s critically important that you can balance access to information and ease of use with actually making sure members are protected.”

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Pointing to previous data, she noted ASIC had looked into internal dispute resolution data of some 35 trustees and concerningly found one in five funds (20%) were not meeting their statutory obligations. 

ASIC also found that there were a lot of funds who were “not learning from the root cause”.

“Yes, they’re getting the complaint, fixing [it], but there’s no root cause analysis of what the complaint is. Is the complaint actually systemic across the fund? Is there something we should be doing and learning about how we treat our members in the future?” Press elaborated. 

However, this was not to say that ASIC believed every complaint received would be valid. 

“Having run a fund, I know that you get complaints that are just whinges, I get that, but you still need to respond and react to those. You need to be able to balance out what is a whinge and what is a true complaint.

“How you treat those people through that complaint process really matters, not only to your fund, but to the credibility of the system.

“[That’s] what I really care about – to make sure people can trust and faith in the superannuation system as a whole.”

In an added step to protect members in today’s digital age, Press also addressed the importance of super funds proactively upgrading their technology, such as voice recognition and facial recognition. 

“It’s something you really need to be thinking about. This is all available technology now,” she said.

“How [the spend] balances out with benefits to members will be fund by fund specific. The size of fund is going to matter in all of this, your administration system is going to matter in all of this.

“[But] if you’re not thinking about it, I think you’re probably missing a trick.”