Monday, July 7, 2008

Why are we setting up our own DIY super fund

In Australia we have a mandatory contribution scheme for or retirement. The fund is managed by one of number of companies who invest the money on your behalf. For this service they receive fees. I have been paying into one of these funds for a number of years.

I (like many other people) have pretty much ignored my superannuation for too long. A couple of months ago I thought it was high time I examined my fund with a fine tooth comb and what I found was pretty worrying.

I found discrepancies on their web site where they contradicted the return for the fund - after my pursuing this I was informed this was copy paste error. Hmm!

I then went through the accounts of my fund and found that the performance of the individual components of my fund (eg Australian shares 15%, International share 20%, cash 10% etc..)didn't seem to add up with what was the stated performance of those components on the superannuation companies website. I rang up and seemingly I am the first person to have asked for a breakdown of this information. After 6 weeks I got an answer t my question.

This I find very concerning not only was the information hard to come by to seems very few people are asking questions. This lack of transparency I find very worrying and I predict some of the superannualtion funds are going to get into trouble because no-one is asking questions. I decided that if a fund was to get into trouble it wasn't going to happen with my money. I presented my findings to the club (we allready had done work on value investment in the past) and this was what persuaded me and the other guys to go for a DIY super managed by value analysis principles.

Has anyone else tried to get information from there superannuation fund? What were your results?

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