The committee responsible for examining the failure of Trio Capital is confident it can deliver a specific cause for the company’s collapse and its recommendations to Parliament in line with its November deadline.
The Parliamentary Joint Committee (PJC) chair Bernie Ripoll told InvestorDaily there had been a satisfactory level of submissions and relevant stakeholders fronting the inquiry.
“I think we’ve got enough evidence, I think we’ve got enough people coming to see us and we’ve met privately also with a range of stakeholders, and I’m confident that given all of that evidence the committee can make a number of recommendations to deal with the Trio matter,” Ripoll said.
“A central focus of our deliberations is to determine, as far as the committee is concerned, what caused the collapse and how it came about and make any recommendations that we think will make it more difficult for something like Trio to happen again in the future.”
He acknowledged the examination of the collapse had been complex due to the involvement with a range of entities, however, he believed the PJC had the capacity to make clear recommendations and clear determinations as to what took place.
“Even though for people who have lost all of their retirement savings, in essence, [this] won’t be very satisfying to them as it still leaves them out of pocket,” he said.
“But hopefully what it can do for them is give them a clear indication of where things went wrong and in essence that it wasn’t their fault.”
He said as part of the committee’s investigations, it had met with Richard St John, the man behind the review of compensation arrangements for consumers of financial services, and discussed issues relating to statutory last resort compensation for self-managed superannuation funds (SMSF).
“There is a clear link for a number of people about how that works. So we’re certainly interested, particularly in the SMSF realm that’s pretty important, because they have no mechanism as such,” he said.
“In fact, no-one really does unless they are protected through section 23 via an APRA (Australian Prudential Regulation Authority)regulated fund. It’s a big part of our inquiry to make it clear that those [APRA] funds pay a fee.
“A big question for people in self-managed superannuation funds is are they prepared to pay like everyone else.”
He said the question of compensation for SMSF trustees was just one of the many questions the committee was seeking answers to.
“We’re certainly determined to at least have an outcome in that area that gives an explanation or helps people better prepare or be better educated,” he said.
“If there is something further we can do, we’ll look at that as well.”
The PJC intends to table its report to Parliament by 24 November.
