Hi All,
I'm curious if anyone has recently changed their superannuation provider. If so, why did you choose this new company? I'm thinking about changing mine because it's not working out.
I've heard Australia Super is good, but they've raised their prices.
Any suggestion?
Thankyou for your suggestion. But i dont manage it by myself.
There will be fees associated with each one, so it is better to merge them into one instead.
As a general rule it is better to have one, people need to consider the impact on any insurances they may want to keep though. For people with pre-existing conditions it can be hard to get death/TPD insurance outside whatever you were able to get when joining your super fund. (Though some will let you roll existing insurance into your new fund when changing there might be restrictions/limits/less beneficial access rules for TPD).
Look at the performance indicators, fees, etc. For example here is what mine gives me (FYTD, 1 yr, 3 yrs, 5 yrs, 10 yrs):
AusSuper 0.03% 1.58% -2.73% 5.59% 7.28% 9.32%
Benchmark n/a n/a -3.44% 4.34% 5.94% 7.99%
Once the fund is chosen, you can further choose investment options within said fund. Balanced, High growth, etc.
Thankyou for the detailed suggestion.
just note, past performance is not necessarily an indicator of future performance.
…because it's not working out.
What exactly isn't working out?
Are the fees too high? Are the investments not living up to your expectations?
I think the first question is.. .Do you have a basic understanding of how investments work?
Under an annual performance test that the Australian Government instituted, Mysuper did poorly. I am considering switching to a different superannuation product
High risk until you're 10ish years away from retirement
Why stop taking risk 10 years before retirement?
Your super needs to last you about 20+ years assuming you retire at 65, so you actually want it to grow so it’ll last out.
Cash/bond based funds are no good if you’re looking for 5 to 8% growth as you enter & live through your latter years.
Everyone has different needs for sure, but copping out with a “convert to cash at 55” blanket approach is totally wrong
Average retirement age will be 75 by the time I hang up the swipe card.
55 was the estimate in the early 90s and hasn't been touted for a very long time unless you live in a broom closet.
You can retire at 60 & take your super tax free. If you really don’t want to keep working after 60, it’s fine
@cashless: From 60 you can take part of it even if you continue working, although that might not be the best strategy if you don't need it since earnings in super are generally taxed less.
Not sure I agree with this. By the time anyone is within sight of retirement, it makes good sense to switch to a conservative approach and protect (to the extent possible), the 40 or so years of accumulated super. For many in their dotage, the stability of funds is more important than riding the tiger. I’ll leave that to the young.
best option is to invest in a fund like Hostplus, Qsuper or Aussie Super* and put your money into 2 or 3 diversified ETFs (being Australia, US and rest of world; or Australia and rest of world). Fees are the lowest (far lower than investing in their default fund) and you will do just as well (based on history) as the default actively managed fund, particularly after fees. You can play around with your ETFs if you want (eg maybe small caps or emerging markets or infrastructure or bonds) but the 2 or 3 ETF portfolio is much lower effort for very likely the same return over the length of your super investment (ie decades)
however the second consideration is insurance; some funds have low fees because of low insurance. So do that comparison
if you are close to retirement (say 5 years away) and have no funds outside of super, then you can look at either changing this balance to have more bonds or just putting the last 5 years worth of contributions into bonds. Whether you should do this or not is disputed; it used to be common wisdom but there is plenty of analysis to say that staying in equities is just as good, so long as you are drawing down over a long period (ie not taking it all out within 2 to 3 years, but drawing down over 15+ years), Or you can hold cash/lower risk investments outside of super and use them if needed.
Recently moved to UniSuper as i wanted more control and investment options. I also found their fees more reasonable.
Am currently with SpiritSuper ( formerly MTAA ) and have been pretty happy with performance
Depending on amount of super, I found qsuper cheapest as they dont have a fixed fee just a percentage of balance
Spaceship
QSuper no longer exists, they're now Australian Retirement Trust after they merged with SunSuper.
Really any of the industry super funds aren't terrible. The only reason to consider a non industry super fund is if their particular insurance is more suitable for you (and you want/need that insurance). And again, really unless it's for insurance reasons you want one super fund rather than multiple. Also extremely unlikely you have this, since it this hasn't been offered for many many years but there are certain legacy super fund choices which you need to be careful switching away from (Defined Benefit schemes) as you can't switch back and they could be better, especially in the current market.
Keep in mind most won't be doing great that last 6 months, something something war in Europe and pandemic coming to an end… It's really about fees so you're not also paying more at the same time.
Within the super funds there's various options which are more different from each other than super funds are from each other. (At least if you're in a fund that offers those sort of choices).
As someone pointed out as well, you balance makes a difference as they have slightly different fee structures in terms of fixed fee / %.
This is general advice only and none of this considers your personal situation, for that you need a licensed financial advisor.
The only reason to consider a non industry super fund is if their particular insurance is more suitable for you (and you want/need that insurance).
Nonsense. SMSF is good for high balances to avoid % fees and to gain control, or if you don’t trust how super funds hide in unit prices what they do with underlying investments, unlisted assets and unrealised CGT provisions. You’re talking as if the only options are industry and non industry funds.
For most people SMSF is a horrible choice. If it's a good choice for you, you're not asking people online, you know (and even then, you're probably wrong). I've seen some absolute horror stories where people have been left hundreds of thousands worse off etc.
There are managed super fund options without unlisted assets. There's certain CGT benefits to a pooled super fund as you individually don't pay GCT when switching investments. Of course yes, you can avoid CGT entirely if you SMSF and never sell the asset until in pension phase, but my experience is people generally don't do that and end up tens of thousands worse off many times over the course of decades.
You need surprisingly high balances for SMSF to make any sense (balances that excluded 99% of the population), you can get capped admin fees on managed super funds and invest in index funds with comparable fees as you would pay in an SMSF. Basically paying less for your managed super than to have someone audit your SMSF and do your SMSF tax returns.
SMSF is a great way people are swindled from their life savings. Of course that's not everyone, but it's stupidly common.
You said the only reason to consider a non-industry fund is insurance. I’ve given you a clearly good reason why your comment is demonstrably wrong, and you ignore that and now tell me SMSF might be okay for 1%?
(I also reject the suggestion of 1%. Stake does $999 funds. Even industry funds in non index options — their defaults — can charge a tonne in fees if your balance is $200k+. Even ASIC had to concede that its prior advice of $500k plus to be required before a SMSF was viable had to be expired after this was drawn out).
@kipps: people asking on ozbargain which super fund to invest in automatically disqualifies them from being recommended to run an SMSF. Do you think they are able to set up a proper investment plan, know how to rebalance portfolios, how to select appropriate diversification, do the paperwork - or, even more importantly, do you think they have the interest in doing that?
Saying SMSF have the lowest fees is all well and good until your lack of investment knowledge causes a $10k loss or tax bill that should have been avoided. That covers a lot of fees
Yes. SMSF is fine if you have the knowledge, skills and time. Perhaps its the best option if you have those qualities. If you dont, its certainly not a great option, regardless of fees
@dtc: Suggest you re-read what I wrote. I corrected the demonstrably false comment that the only reason anyone should consider non-industry fund is insurance.
@kipps: Context is kind of vital here. And yes, I should have said 'retail fund' not 'non industry' fund. But I wasn't considering SMSF given most people in them would be better off out of them, much less people asking here.
@kipps: Stake isn't an SMSF. It's an investment option. I've run the numbers on a couple million dollars and the industry super fund still won by a mile over the SMSF (OBVIOUSLY not in the default investment option). $500k is wrong in that it's way way too low. You'll be paying more in accounting fees than you would in an industry fund in fees total, and still paying fees on top for many investment options.
Why compare a default option with something 0.001% of SMSF's use.
Fine, my wording should have been 'the only reason to consider a retail superfund' vs 'non industry'. But given the questions being asked you would be bat shit crazy to recommend an SMSF, they're for sophisticated investors only.
1% is being extremely generous IMO.
You can get a lot of research funded by the absolute leaches that SMSFs attract saying how good they are (by cherry picking dates and investments rather than whole industry comparisons and crucially, excluding all costs, which go into their association member's pockets), the reality is very different. And worse, there's extreme variance, some might do better, but the ones that do badly, are life-destroying bad.
The productivity commission recommended $1million minimum, lowering it to $500k once convinced to exclude costs.
@[Deactivated]: So you're recanting from your comments that the only reason someone would consider a non-industry fund is insurance?
Insurance in super is garbage. There's no income protection to age 65. Proper insurance is found outside super.
Stake SMSF is an SMSF. I didn't recommend them but simply said it's an option. Not going to bother arguing with you about fees - I'm quite content with $999 and I've compared it against an industry fund.
You can get a lot of research funded by the absolute leaches that SMSFs attract saying how good they are
Retail funds, industry funds, and SMSF providers have all been caught doing this.
You seem triggered by this - do you work for super fund?
@kipps: Hopefully all insurance is garbage or things have gone horribly wrong. Some people don't have an option to get a medical free insurance outside super. That makes insurance outside super a non starter.
So you're recanting
I have twice said what I meant when I typed that, if you can't read an SMSF is definitely not for you. It's the only reason anyone getting advice here should. If you have better advice for you, you do you. I was replying to OP, not you.
What I typed was fine for the context, it just wasn't what you wanted it to say, you're not the main character here.
Retail funds, industry funds, and SMSF providers have all been caught doing this.
Yeah, it's just generally true for Industry funds and generally not for the others.
No I don't work for a super fund. I have many years ago worked for a company that supplied several retail super funds for full disclosure. And I know personally several SMSF holders who were robbed blind to life-destroying extent, due to people's advice they set one up. So yes, it's triggering. I've never met someone who had their life ruined by an industry super fund, at worst they do slightly better than average.
Note even Stake doesn't think their SMSF is universally better until >$500k (and that's really stacking the deck in their favour). https://hellostake.com/au/legal/smsf-risks
And they're not representative of typical SMSF costs, they're the cheapest one.
@[Deactivated]: Would respectfully disagree an SMSF is a horrible choice. If you’re willing to do a bit of reading, and take on a bit of responsibility it can start making sense for balances around $100k each for a couple.
If you don’t want the hassle or the responsibility, then yes there are good options in industry super funds up to a balance of about $500k each, but then it starts getting hard to remain competitive.
OP you haven’t mentioned age, approximate balance or attitude to risk. All these can affect the best choice for you - personal finance is personal. The following link can give an idea on fees for a particular option. Hostplus is exceptionally competitive in either indexed shares or their “indexed balanced”. The default products for most providers is generally more expensive than some of their other offerings (ie there’s a lazy tax).
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1sR0CyX8GswPiktOrfqRl…
If you don’t want the hassle or the responsibility, then yes there are good options in industry super funds up to a balance of about $500k each, but then it starts getting hard to remain competitive.
That would be why there are Industry Super funds that cap their fees at around that level. It doesn't really make much difference above that either for that reason.
If you're just investing in low cost index funds then you don't save any money on fees doing that in an SMSF, just the audit costs are comparable, and investment fees are the same.
Sure, if you go pick your own shares and hold them until retirement, by all means, but I think that's more than a bit of reading for most people, at some point it ends up being a second job, great if you're enthusiastic about it, but for most people, unwanted and they'll probably do a bad job since most financial advisors don't outperform the index. How many SMSFs you think bought Crypto in Feb this year? And when you're switching assets your SMSF is going to be paying CGT, which you're generally going to avoid most of in a pooled super fund (albeit paying it at a low level each year). So then it's not just a fee consideration, but all the extra tax you might end up paying.
Otherwise agree. It's definitely personal. Not much is universally true, though at best you still can't escape audit costs even if you do everything else yourself, and for most people their time is better spent elsewhere.
Based on experience, I would choose any fund other than Australian Super. Their fees are high for low balances, which covid has shown us is most people, and their customer service is crap unless you threaten to complain to the regulator.
Don't just consider past performance, look at the fee structure - industry funds tend to have lower fees.
I recommend HostPlus. I have been in their Balanced Fund since 2005 and it has performed very well over this period.
Two things to consider here -
My 2 cents are, most of people should choose the product that has lowest cost and is based on international index stocks.
Where is the AMP option?
Vanguard Super, when it's released. Should be coming up pretty soon, I'm on the mailing list.
Its been "coming soon" for years now, I doubt they are going to release anything earth shattering.
I got an email recently. Seems like it'll be end of year, or early next.
Australian Catholic Superannuation.
I've decided Superhero Superannuation as one of the best platforms I've ever seen. Bit of a game changer actually.
https://www.smartcompany.com.au/finance/superannuation/super…
https://www.finder.com.au/superhero-super
There is also Raiz super and Spaceship Super.
Raiz has several selections for risk profile, which is nice and simple, but not really that much different to most companies. Spaceship makes it super simple, as you only have 2 choices, but it's still worth consideration.
Anyway, the most interesting one IMO is Superhero Super, which has actually tried to do things much differently and allows you much more control over what you can invest in.
Vanguard Super is now live.
Can anyone share their opinion on Rest super ?
Diversify and invest in all.