Government and regulator interaction
Treasury has released the Exposure Draft Regulations and Explanatory Statement for the Government’s Your Future, Your Super (YFYS) package. While we have welcomed the changes to the proposed superannuation performance benchmark, we continue to have outstanding concerns as we outlined in our submission to the Senate Economics Committee.
We are in the process of gathering feedback from our members on the YFYS draft regulations and plan to provide a submission to Treasury by their 25 May due date.
ASFA also appeared before the Senate Economics Committee on 7 April as part of their inquiry into the YFYS Bill. We expressed concerns with a proposed start date of 1 July, especially challenging for employers, given too much detail has been left to the regulations. We also noted that the reversal of the onus of proof is an attack on the presumption of innocence, a fundamental pillar of our legal system.
On 11 May the Treasurer will hand down the Federal Budget for 2021-22. We will be attending the Budget lock up and, as we do every year, we’ll be sending out some key Budget highlights to our members that evening.
Research and submissions
We provided a submission to Treasury in response to their consultation on exposure draft regulations and explanatory materials for the breach reporting rules that formed part of the response to Hayne’s Banking Royal Commission. We continue to express our concerns that the new breach reporting regime will be quite onerous to comply with and that there remains a degree of uncertainty about the amended breach reporting and remediation provisions in the Corporations Act 2001.
Media
As a result of our appearance before the Senate Economics Committee in relation to their inquiry into the YFYS package, ASFA was featured in articles in the AFR and The Australian.
Our commentary on the released YFYS draft regulations was featured in articles in The Age and The Australian.
We also provided some commentary to The Australian on the impact COVID-19 has had on superannuation fund account numbers.
Our joint letter to Government, co-signed with AIST and ISA, requesting the release of the YFYS regulations was featured in an AFR article.
Events and Learning
We’ll be holding Budget Briefing events between 12-14 May in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane. Industry experts from AMP, Counsel House, Q Super and EY will be unpacking the Federal Budget by discussing the issues and decisions impacting our industry.
Look out for our upcoming Spotlight on Risk and Compliance event on 27 May! The event will have short, sharp and practical sessions that explore risk and compliance challenges such as DDO, IDR, ESG and conduct and culture.
During the month of May we’re delivering the following learning workshops: