Australia’s largest super fund fined $27 million
Australia's largest superannuation fund has been charged a whopping $27 million for charging duplicate fees to tens of thousands of customers.
AustralianSuper was first sued by the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) in 2023.
During the investigation, it was discovered that more than 48,000 members’ accounts were not merged in their best interests, allowing duplicate fees to eat in to the retirement savings of hard-working Aussies.
About 90,000 AustralianSuper members were affected between July 2013 and March 2023, costing them $69 million.
Both ASIC and AustralianSuper appeared in the Federal Court at Melbourne on Friday, where Justice Lisa Hespe handed down her decision.
AustralianSuper were fined $27 million, and were also ordered to pay ASIC’s legal costs up to $500,000.
“By failing to properly remediate that beneficiary, AustralianSuper did not exercise in relation to the interests of that beneficiary the same degree of skill, care and diligence as a prudent superannuation trustee would have exercised,” Justice Lisa Hespe ruled.
AustralianSuper apologised to members when the lawsuit began, saying it regretted that its processes to identify and combine multiple accounts did not cover all instances of multiple member accounts.
In a statement after the hearing, AustralianSuper chief executive Paul Schroder said they had taken steps to prevent similar mistakes.
“We found this mistake, we reported it, we apologised to impacted members, we compensated them, and we’ve improved our processes to prevent this happening again,” he said.
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