After releasing a position paper mid-July, the Federal Government has released draft legislation for the retirement income covenant – Treasury Laws Amendment (Measure for a later sitting) Bill 2021: Retirement income covenant.
Minister for Superannuation, Financial Services and the Digital Economy, Senator Jane Hume, said the draft legislation would codify the obligation for superannuation trustees to have a retirement income strategy that outlines how they plan to assist their members in retirement.
“The strategy must consider how the trustee will assist their members to balance maximising their retirement income, managing risks, and have some flexible access to savings,” Senator Hume said when releasing the draft legislation.
The government has also cleared up confusion around whether the covenant would include self-managed super funds (SMSFs) in the draft legislation by explicitly stating in its explanatory memorandum: “This covenant does not apply to trustees of self-managed superannuation funds”.
TWUSUPER has announced they will not be moving forward with a possible merger with EISS Super. The two industry funds announced they were in discussions in April this year.
A TWUSUPER spokesperson said “TWUSUPER’s motivation in entering merger discussions with EISS was the potential benefit members of both funds would achieve from greater scale. We also felt EISS members would benefit from TWUSUPER’s strong investment performance. Following extensive due diligence TWUSUPER will not proceed with a merger with EISS at this time. Any merger must be in members’ best interest. TWUSUPER is now pursuing other growth options.”
Penny has nearly two decades experience of writing, reporting and editing financial services publications for both institutional and retail readers. She has contributed to, and edited, the Money Section of the Sun Herald and The Sunday Age.
She has written for the Australian Financial Review and the Sydney Morning Herald, the Cooperative Research Centres Association publication KnowHow Magazine, JMoney, In The Black and Global Investor.
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