APRA releases research on superannuation fund governance

The Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA) has released the results of its recent research on the governance practices of APRA-regulated superannuation funds (pdf).

The research, based on a detailed survey of superannuation trustees, found that there was little difference between the Corporate, Public Sector, Industry and Retail sectors in many areas of trustee policies and practices.  In some areas, however, there were statistically significant differences between the sectors, with Retail trustee practice more often different from that of the other sectors.

Some of the findings of the research include:

 

• Trustee directors of the large funds in the survey were typically well qualified, experienced and reasonably well trained in their trustee duties.
• Most boards (76 per cent) have both independent audit and regular self-assessment to review compliance with the Superannuation Industry (Supervision) Act 1993 and other regulations.
• Service providers are widely used in the superannuation industry, with the average fund using more than 13 service providers. Over 60 per cent of Retail directors have one or more associations with service providers, a figure that is double that for directors of Corporate funds and almost three times that for Public Sector or Industry funds.
• Relative to the other trustees, Retail trustees have fewer directors, shorter (but just as frequent) board meetings, and rely more on fund executives to take the initiative on most key decisions. By contrast, trustees in the other three sectors mostly make the decisions with the main input coming either from themselves or from their consultants.
• More than half of all Retail trustee directors are employed by related parties or by the fund itself, and very few are nominated by fund members. By contrast, many Industry, Corporate and Public Sector trustee directors are member-nominated.
• More than half of Corporate, Public Sector and Industry trustee directors are themselves members of their funds.  About one in five Retail trustee directors are members of their funds.