Issue 705, 8 April 2019
In this issue:
- Product dashboards: ASIC deferrals
Product dashboards: ASIC deferrals
ASIC has extended until 1 July 2023 the date from which trustees must provide choice product dashboards, and relief allowing trustees to provide a link to product dashboards on websites rather than including them in periodic statements.
Trustees are required to publish on a fund’s website a product dashboard which provides summary information for consumers about the fund’s MySuper and choice products. However, regulations specifying the particular content for a choice product dashboard have never been finalised and Superannuation Legislation Amendment (Transparency Measures) Bill 2016, which varied the commencement date and rules for choice product dashboards, lapsed when Parliament was suspended in April 2016
ASIC has extended the original start date for the commencement of the choice product dashboard a number of times, most recently to 1 July 2019 (see ASFA Action issue 632).
ASIC has now made ASIC Corporations (Amendment) Instrument 2019/240, extending to 1 July 2023 the date from which choice product dashboards must be published.
Paragraph 7.9.20(1)(o) of the Corporations Regulations 2001 requires that if a trustee is required to make publicly available a product dashboard for an investment option, the dashboards must be included as part of a periodic statement given to members.
ASIC has provided interim relief from this requirement, allowing a trustee to instead include a website address for the latest product dashboard either in, or in a document accompanying, the periodic statement. This relief was extended a number of times and most recently applied to those periodic statements with a reporting period ending before 1 July 2019 (see ASFA Action issue 632).
Instrument 2019/240 now extends that relief to apply to those periodic statements with a reporting period ending before 1 July 2023.
The explanatory material accompanying Instrument 2019/240 notes that the deferrals “do not represent a policy view by ASIC in relation to the application of the choice product dashboard provisions nor a view as to the time likely to be taken by Government in settling a policy view”.
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