After putting my kids to bed on Sunday evening, I switched on the television and was about to switch off my brain, when an advertisement caught my attention.
Viewers were being sought to participate in a competition in which 10 prizes of $10,000 in cold hard cash could be won.
Now, competitions like these do not often grab my attention as the chances of winning are apparently less than being struck by lightning, but the fact that entering the competition was based on opening a superannuation account was novel to me.
It made me wonder: "Is that legal?"
Can trustees offer prospective members the chance to win money in order to lure them into their fund?
The Superannuation Industry (Supervision) Act is not entirely clear about this dilemma.
In section 68A of the act, it says trustees cannot offer employers any inducements to sign up their employees as members, but as far as I could tell there was nothing to prevent trustees from offering them directly to prospective members.
So I approached ASIC directly.
"We have no comment on the specifics you have mentioned," the corporate watchdog said.
But generally speaking, ASIC said it expected industry participants to act "responsibly, in the best interests of consumers, and to comply with existing obligations relating to disclosure, advice and conduct, including advertising".
"Advertising is an area of interest for ASIC," the regulator added.
So far, scrutiny of financial product advertisements has largely dealt with misleading or deceptive information.
That is certainly not the case here.
The advertisement is blatantly clear about what is required and what could be expected.
To enter the competition, a person has to open an account with BT Super for Life and transfer, or rollover, $5000 into the new account.
"Get sorted in 10 minutes," the advertisement promises.
As a former editor of a legal business magazine, I have great respect for the skills and professionalism of the Westpac in-house legal team, so I am inclined to think the competition is perfectly legal.
But I kept wondering what the consequences of such a competition could be.
Younger workers are devoutly indifferent to superannuation, but they do care about $10,000.
Imagine how many iPads you could buy with that!
In this light, ASIC's comments about acting in the best interest of consumers are tricky to interpret.
Obviously, financial services companies such as Westpac are established to generate profits for their shareholders, not to hold the hands of disinterested consumers.
But trustees also have their fiduciary duty, and a competition like this does not fit the bill of taking someone's personal circumstances into consideration to arrive at a sensible, well-balanced choice that will affect a person's financial health for decades to come.
A spokesperson for BT Financial Group stressed that in signing up any new clients, the company followed proper procedures.
"To manage their fiduciary duty when promoting their products, super funds make it clear that customers should first consider the product's appropriateness, having regard to their own objectives, financial situation and needs," the spokesperson said.
"BT Financial Group uses the government-approved rollover form, which ensures customers acknowledge any information about the effect the transfer could have on their benefits."
I'm sure the spokeperson was right and that the competition is perfectly compliant with current legislation, and, in many ways, it is a consequence of the privatisation of a pension system.
But is it best practice?
