February 2019

13Feb

Australia. Pensioners set for income threshold boost

Draft laws allowing pensioners to earn $300 a fortnight - up from $250 - without it hurting their welfare payments passed the first green light of parliament. Pensioners will soon be able to earn $300 a fortnight without it hurting their welfare payments under draft laws which passed the first hurdle of parliament. The proposal cleared the lower house alongside two other measures - means testing pooled-retirement-income products and allowing more older Australians to access the pension loan scheme...

February 13, 2019
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05Feb

Australia. We need generational change on retirement incomes

Most retirees are better off than we previously thought. Public policy should reflect this. It's been a quarter of a century since the Keating government introduced a retirement-income package in 1992 and Vince Fitzgerald reported on national savings in 1993. For a generation, Australian retirement incomes policy has been dominated by their assumptions.We've had a generation of policy thinkers who assumed that people won't have enough money in retirement. Many fear retirees will be financially insecure, and...

February 5, 2019
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January 2019

30Jan

Australia. Veterans accuse Federal Government of ‘ripping off’ thousands from retirement benefits

A Federal Coalition backbencher is lobbying the Government to investigate how much money he believes it owes some older Australian military veterans. Veterans, including some who served in Korea, Malaya and Vietnam, signed up for compulsory superannuation called the Defence Force Retirement Benefits (DFRDB) scheme between 1948 and 1972. The Defence Force Welfare Organisation (DFWO) estimated there are 2,305 pensioners still covered by this scheme. It calculated there are 52,000 pensioners who are members of the scheme that operated...

January 30, 2019
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14Jan

Is it time for the Government to get more involved in protecting retirement savings of workers?

However the superannuation industry wants to gloss over it, the Productivity Commission's inquiry into the sector is a damning indictment. A $3.8 billion-a-year indictment.That's how much Australians are missing out on because of a superannuation industry that appears to be more interested in its own wellbeing, rather than the retirements of the Australian workers it's meant to be providing for.Former federal treasurer, now Future Fund chairman, Peter Costello nailed the industry's self-interest in a speech in Sydney a few...

January 14, 2019
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14Jan

The Vulnerability of Older Australians in Bankruptcy: Insights from an Empirical Study

By Lev Bromberg (The University of Melbourne), Ian Ramsay (Melbourne Law School - University of Melbourne), Paul Ali (University of Melbourne - Law School; Centre for International Finance and Regulation)This article presents the results of the first empirical study focused on older Australians in bankruptcy. Our study — based on the examination of a large and unique dataset obtained by the authors from the bankruptcy regulator — provides a valuable insight into the severe financial challenges faced by many...

January 14, 2019
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10Jan

Australia. Investors increasing fixed income allocations

New research has found that fixed income is set to experience a spike over the new twelve months among institutional investors.  BlackRock’s annual survey of global institutional investors found that 38 per cent of investors intended to increase their fixed income allocations, up 9 percentage points from 29 per cent last year. BlackRock’s global head of institutional client business Edwin Conway said that as the economic cycle turned private markets would help clients to navigate the challenging environment. “We have...

January 10, 2019
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09Jan

Australia. Industry super to dominate at $1 trillion by 2024

Industry superannuation funds are on track to overtake self-managed super funds to become the dominant players in the $2.7 trillion retirement savings system within the next two years. The remarkable shift is being driven by a combination of factors, including industry funds' superior investment returns and members switching from retail super funds in the wake of damning hearings at the banking royal commission. Read more @AFR

January 9, 2019
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08Jan

Australia. Investors blindsided by tax from super withdrawals

Australians running their own superannuation funds are being hit with surprise taxes due to a lack of understanding regarding what meeting a full condition of release means, a technical expert has warned. SuperConcepts non-executive director Stuart Forsyth explained that he is coming across a number of SMSF trustees who have decided to pull money out of their super fund and pay it back without realising that the commissioner might consider that to be assessable income. What often happens in these situations, he...

January 8, 2019
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December 2018

13Dec

Older Australians living overseas will need to prove they are alive to keep getting pension

Australians aged over 80 who are living overseas will soon have to produce a "proof of life certificate" to continue receiving the pension. From July 1, pensioners will be asked to go to an Australian embassy or consulate every two years to register that they are still alive and entitled to receive a welfare payment. Social Services Minister Paul Fletcher said estimates suggested there had been thousands of cases where a person died while living overseas but continued to receive the...

December 13, 2018
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10Dec

The Vulnerability of Older Australians in Bankruptcy: Insights from an Empirical Study

By Lev Bromberg (The University of Melbourne), Ian Ramsay (Melbourne Law School - University of Melbourne), Paul Ali (University of Melbourne - Law School; Centre for International Finance and Regulation (CIFR)) This article presents the results of the first empirical study focused on older Australians in bankruptcy. Our study — based on the examination of a large and unique dataset obtained by the authors from the bankruptcy regulator — provides a valuable insight into the severe financial challenges faced by...

December 10, 2018
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