ATO's new super comparison tool: What do you think?

Money Health Insurance
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Thanks for sharing your thoughts! The tool currently only covers the simple ‘MySuper’ products. But next year it will be expanded to cover more of the market

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Thanks! I’ll add that to the list. And welcome to CHOICE Community!

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I thought it works quite well.
If they are trying to make it simple for people to find the best super fund for their situation, then 2 suggestions:

  1. Sort the results on the basis of best long term (6 years in ATO’s case) performance. A punter just wants to go to the ATO site, easily find the best performing fund for them and click on a link to the funds website. Why wouldn’t they sort the results on that basis? (If you are computer savvy, you can do this yourself by clicking on the top of the relevant column, but why not make it easier for everyone.)
  2. Allow users to select accumulation or pension modes.
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An article regarding the YourSuper tool.

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Hi all… I’m new to this but I would like to know which Super fund calculator is worth using?.. I have been using the one on the Care Super site (I’m not a member of this fund… another IF). This one is quite good but limited (as most would be) to a static model of income over time… thoughts?

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Hi @Waikikitim and welcome to the Community.

I have moved your post into this existing one about the ATO’s YourSuper Calculator tool. Hopefully this may assist you and I’m sure others may also provide their experience with other tools they have found or with the ATO tool.

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I cannot add to @grahroll’s response excepting that there are more variables than income, eg growth. ‘Past performance is no guarantee of future returns’ is the disclaimer.

The biggest components to assess those inclusions are
a) will income actually grow at a ‘standard’ rate for the duration of worklife? Many wage earners have not had raises in 5 years and counting. Others have doubled their income in recent years alone.

b) how is the investment market doing for the particular fund(s) in the super basket. Comparators usually only address default (balanced) funds. I have a mix of a Small Cap and an Australian Shares in my super and the former does far better than the latter over time. What gets compared? My software treats them as a single account for the purposes of P/L/Growth. The Australian Shares is relatively more conservative than Small Cap which is why I keep both.

Most forward estimations need a basis where the more useful ones allow one to plug in the average wage growth and the expected annual returns, but they apply them linearly which is not realistic.

Using the fund managers long term growth claims is advisory at best because they are computed on a date. If one makes contributions on any other date there could be a bigger profit or even a substantial loss. It is a mine field.

A last comment is super returns are not just about fees, it is about actual growth in one’s account. If one is paying a 2% fee to get 10%p.a. sustained (after fees) account growth it is a better deal than only 0.25% fees for 9% sustained (after fees) growth, to make the point. Looking beyond the default (balanced) funds can be worthwhile for those who watch their investments. Those more into ‘set and forget’ would usually be ill-advised to go beyond default (balanced) because of how ‘Mr Market’ behaves over time.

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