AustralianSuper for delayed processing of almost 7000 death benefit claims<\/a>.<\/p>\nASIC chair Joe Longo said its pursuit of superannuation funds over death claims should come as a warning to the sector.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is an ongoing priority for ASIC. We have ongoing proceedings against AustralianSuper that were commenced earlier this year, raising similar issues,\u201d Mr Longo told Business Now.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou can expect ASIC to continue to be pressing the superannuation sector to put front and centre the services they provide and the interactions that they have with their members.<\/p>\n
\u201cCbus happened yesterday, but you can expect ASIC to take a continued interest in this matter, in this situation, and AustralianSuper is the next matter that we’ll be dealing with.\u201d<\/p>\n
ASIC alleges between July 1, 2019, and October 18, 2024 AustralianSuper took anywhere from four months to four years to assess at least 6,897 death benefit claims from their date of return.<\/p>\n
The corporate watchdog alleges for at least 752 cases, AustralianSuper failed to pay benefits “as soon as practicable” after a member’s death.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, Cbus was slapped with its hefty fine after it was found to have failed to meet its members\u2019 needs during stressful times.<\/p>\n
Justice O\u2019Callaghan, when handing down his sentence on the Cbus case, said these delays can have \u201cserious and unacceptable consequences for affected members and claimants\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe penalties awarded in this case need to be significant enough to send a clear deterrent message to dissuade other superannuation fund trustees, and other Australian financial services licensees generally, from failing to discharge their duties diligently by providing financial services efficiently, honestly and fairly,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Alongside the large penalty, Cbus will also pay $32 million in compensation to 7,402 claimants or beneficiaries whose claims were not processed within a reasonable timeframe.<\/p>\n
The super fund also has to publish a notice on its website about the fund’s activity.<\/p>\n
Cbus said it has established reserves to pay the penalty and has compensated its impacted members.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe want to again apologise to our members, families and claimants without reservation and promise to do better,\u201d a statement on Cbus\u2019 website says.<\/p>\n
\u201cCbus has now paid compensation to almost all affected members, their families and claimants.\u201d<\/p>\n
It also said it has doubled the size of its claims team and formed specialist units to manage claims \u201cmore efficiently and empathetically\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Fund\u00a0has announced further significant reforms to its insurance claims process, which are expected to remove 4\u20136 weeks from processing times for the average death claim and deliver a simpler, more compassionate experience for families,\u201d Cbus said.<\/p>\n
\u201cA new simplified insurance payment process for death benefit payments will also commence from next Monday (1 December 2025).\u201d<\/p>\n
The fund said it manages more than $105b as of June 30 and had about 914,000 members with a balance at the time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Australia\u2019s corporate watchdog has delivered the superannuation sector a warning after a major fund was forced to pay…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":200938,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[177],"tags":[3779,110993,20022,79,110991,18,19,17,58459,234,235,110994,110992,11782],"class_list":{"0":"post-200937","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-personal-finance","8":"tag-asic","9":"tag-asic-chair-joe-longo","10":"tag-australian-securities-and-investments-commission","11":"tag-business","12":"tag-corporate-watchdog","13":"tag-eire","14":"tag-ie","15":"tag-ireland","16":"tag-joe-longo","17":"tag-personal-finance","18":"tag-personalfinance","19":"tag-super-industry","20":"tag-super-sector","21":"tag-superannuation"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/115615303110668440","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200937","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=200937"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200937\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/200938"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=200937"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=200937"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=200937"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}