Rice Warner is broadly supportive of the Financial System Inquiry’s (FSI) recommended primary and subsidiary objectives of superannuation but with some reservations and suggestions.
We suggest that the primary objective is extended to cover “adequacy” of retirement income and point to the significant omissions in the subsidiary objectives of the roles of life insurance and non-superannuation savings.
Our comments are in Rice Warner’s submission in response to the recent Treasury discussion paper Objective of Superannuation.
We support the approach of having an overarching, primary objective for superannuation. All future changes should be measured against this objective – before being introduced. Yet a single, simple statement is unlikely to provide sufficient focus and would probably become just a slogan.
Primary objective
Rice Warner proposes a small amendment to the FSI’s recommendation so that the primary objective is “to supplement or substitute the Age Pension to provide an adequate income in retirement”.
We are simply adding the word “adequate”.
