Assistant Treasurer Daniel Mulino is unveiling the long-awaited changes after the Shield and First Guardian managed <a href="https://bitcomme.com/principle-wealth-partners-llc-makes-new-1-07-million-investment-in-salesforce-inc-crm/” title=”Principle Wealth Partners LLC Makes New $1.07 Million Investment in Salesforce Inc. $CRM”>investment schemes collapsed.
Queensland woman Claire* only realised something was wrong when she received a strange email from “equity trustees”. At the time, the term didn’t mean anything to her, but she clicked into the email with curiosity.
It alerted her to major financial losses she had suffered in the superannuation account. It came months after moving her retirement savings into a new investment fund at the behest of pushy advisers.
“I was just lucky that I clicked on it,” she told Yahoo Finance. Ironically, that’s the exact opposite sentiment she feels about the initial mistake she made that got her into the mess in the first place.
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While “doomscrolling” Facebook one night, an ad caught her eye.
“It was along the lines of nine out of 10 super funds are underperforming. Is your’s one of them?” she recalled. “It wasn’t dodgy looking.”
She clicked to find out if her super fund was on the list. “To get the article you had to put your name and your phone number and your email in, or something like that.”
However when she did, she didn’t get an article. Instead she got a call from a business on the Gold Coast.
Claire was urged to send through her latest superannuation statement, which she did, and that’s when the “constant” calls started.
Despite her reservations and skepticisms – and repeatedly declining their overtures – the pushy tactics from financial advisers on the other end of the line eventually wore her down and she was convinced to move her superannuation from industry fund to a new fund on the promise of higher returns.
In the end, she was among the thousands of Aussies who lost retirement savings in the $1 billion collapse of the Shield and First Guardian managed investment schemes.
She saw $165,000 in retirement savings disappear.
It’s the kind of aggressive, arguably predatory, tactics that will face much tough regulation under new changes to be introduced.
New ban to protect superannuation savings
Assistant Treasurer Daniel Mulino will unveil the long-awaited consumer protection reforms in this space in an address to the National Press Club today. Marketers who use social media to lure people into putting retirement savings into risky investments will be put on notice under the changes.
“Almost 12,000 Australian individual members of super funds and their families, lost large parts or in some cases, all of their super savings,” Mulino told ABC radio this morning.
