Here are seven of the dodgy practices of super funds, many of which came to light at the recent royal commission into banking. Share your ‘not-so-super’ super experiences here.
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One aspect of ‘retail funds’ is there are often retail and wholesale versions of each. They would be named along the lines of Big Aussie Trust Me Forever My Super Fund ($1.00 to open), and Big Aussie Trust Me My Super Wholesale Fund (say $25,000 or more to open).
If you start out like most with fortnightly contributions you can only open retail funds. The funds will not tell you or remind you that once you reach the designated wholesale fund minimum you can convert the retail fund to a wholesale fund, usually (often?) at no cost or spreads.
The differences between the retail and wholesale funds are lower fees or fee rebates that are delivered as more units. If one has a retail fund and a financial advisor, and the financial advisor has not advised accordingly, guess who that planner is working for - hint: not you.
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Where do ‘Industry’ funds fit?)
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I had personal experience with the first and last on the list.
Financial advice through the CBA - they saw me coming a mile off. Then the recurring slug for financial advice each month with translated more to ‘fleecing the idiots’ - of which I hate to say I was one ! Put a stop to that. More recently needed to further consolidate and they must have had me flagged as a good source of unquestioning revenue (idiot) and went at me again. This time, however, I was ready 
Still can’t believe how obvious things were, but I was going through a lot at the time - to me this might highlight just how big those things were, I’d like to think, but in reality I’ve never been flash with cash, so the idiot tag probably has a place too …
And for getting boned - someone very close to me worked for the dodgiest of businesses who simply refused to pay super, and bullied her in the process. Turns out that’s how they treated all their employees - never denied they were entitled to it, just didn’t pay. We resolved the situation by communicating in unambiguous language and returning some of their bullying, with interest and help from a much bigger organisation. Oddly the other employees thought we were the bad guys for rocking the boat - Stockholm syndrome is alive and well …
Good article! thanks
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Most of the industry funds should be the funds of choice for the average punter who is not engaged with investing and does not take a hands on approach. Some of the industry funds are pretty ordinary, but on average industry default funds deliver more than the garden variety retail default fund, and industry funds take most of the top positions in the rankings for default funds. In general I suspect that those with wholesale funds tend to either be more engaged in what their investments are doing, or have good advisors.
In my own experience a good mix of wholesale funds rivals and exceeds the better industry default funds, but that is not comparing apples and apples, it is comparing an engaged investor with an average punter.
Horses for courses and what matters in the end is how has YOUR super account been going.
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I’m glad that you stood up to them and got what “someone very close” to you was owed.
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