Mr Garcia made the comments at an AIST luncheon in Sydney yesterday, after keynote speaker Dialog Marketing Services executive director Len Rust said the superannuation industry generates too much paper-based information – much of which is often “irrelevant” to members.
Superannuation funds need to consider the issues involved in handling ‘big data’ (ie. extremely large and complex data sets), said Mr Rust.
“You’ve got to be able to look at getting that data out there faster, and in a way which is more readable and attractive to individual members,” he said.
It’s not too late for funds that are behind the ball when it comes to technology, he said – but they are likely to face stiff competition from the more advanced players in the sector.
“People will expect everything to be [delivered] onto a tablet or a mobile. They don’t expect it to be a thick wad of reports that they get every quarter,” said Mr Rust.
Responding to a question from the audience about the possibility of making electronic reporting the default setting for members, Mr Garcia said there had been little action by the regulator on the topic to date.
“I don’t think anything is happening from an ASIC point of view. They’re very slow to move on these sorts of things,” said Mr Garcia.
Just as there is an issue with the amount of ‘paper’ in the superannuation sector, financial planners face a similar issues with statements of advice, he said.
“A lot of statements of advice are done by weight rather than by quality – if it’s 100 pages it must be good,” said Mr Garcia.
Both superannuation member reports and statements of advice are areas that should be examined by ASIC, he said.
“It’s about content, and it’s about how people receive that information and make decisions. That’s something we need to look at right across the board with portfolio disclosure and with the product dashboard,” said Mr Garcia
“How are people going to receive that information and behave? That’s the next layer that I think the regulator needs to go down,” he said.
