Only three industry funds have made Chant West’s list of 12 “adviser-ready” super funds, while the seven largest retail platform providers each received the seal of approval.
The Adviser-Ready Fund accreditation was announced by Chant West and the Financial Advice Association Australia during a webcast on Wednesday. They have launched the framework to make it easier for financial advisers to work with super funds to support their shared clients and fund members.
Australian Retirement Trust (Super Savings), Aware Super and Brighter Super were the only industry funds that made the list.
The ratings come as industry funds seek to bridge the gap with advisers to help deliver more advice to members, particularly as the Retirement Income Covenant has created the expectation that super funds deliver retirement income solutions to members.
The FAAA/Chant West list excludes the country’s largest super fund, AustralianSuper; UniSuper, which has long had an internal adviser channel but has since tried to grow its external partnership stream; Cbus, which has a referral program with the FAAA; as well as million-member funds Hostplus, REST and Hesta.
All the major platform providers – AMP MyNorth, BT Panorama, CFS’ Edge and FirstChoice, HUB24, MLC Expand and MasterKey, Macquarie and Netwealth – were accredited.
The Adviser-Ready Fund accreditation doesn’t rate the superannuation products within the funds, fees or investment performance.
FAAA chief executive Sarah Abood said the Adviser-Ready Fund accreditation is designed to be to be product agnostic.
“Some style of product will suit one client better than another,” Abood said.
“What we’re hoping to do with this accreditation is make it clearer to financial advisers themselves and importantly to their teams, which super funds have got the tools and the processes in place that can enable them to help their clients who are also super fund members.”
Key criteria include the existence of a client portal, the ability to transact on a client’s behalf, being able to deduct advice fees, BDMs that can help advisers, and data feeds to advice software.
Overall, funds are assessed on 24 criteria and need to meet 16 points to achieve the accreditation.
Chant West general manager Ian Fryer said the purpose was purely to determine whether certain services and features were provided. “Do funds do this or not? It’s quite black and white,” he said.
Fryer pointed to the work the ratings house did with Bec Wilson for the Epic Retirement Tick, when funds that didn’t achieve recognition sought feedback on how to improve. He said a similar pattern is happening with the Adviser-Ready Fund accreditation.
“We’ve seen some evidence that funds that didn’t make the Adviser-Ready Fund list… have asked for meetings so they can work out what they need to do to get there and that’s a big purpose of this project,” Fryer said.
Abood said advisers shouldn’t be in a situation where they feel they need to move a member away from a fund just so they can do their job effectively. “That’s a big part of what we’re trying to achieve with this,” she said.
Another aim of the research was to help advisers better understand the adviser-friendly features across all funds.
“We’re seeing this initiative as supporting Best Interests Duty,” Abood said.
Fryer said industry funds should be working with advisers to help better serve their members.
“Some funds may be concerned by doing this that there might be more of their members taken out, but I would have thought you’re much more likely to lose members to another product through an adviser if you’re not providing these services,” Fryer said.
“It’s been really sad over many years to see the sort of antagonism between the two groups. I think the two groups are really important in providing great retirement outcomes for members.”
The names of the funds that haven’t passed – or how they scored – won’t be disclosed.
“We’re not trying to highlight funds that could be doing more,” Fryer said.
“We’re trying to highlight the funds that are doing a good job now and work behind the scenes with other funds.”
