Mr Cooper, who is the chairman for retirement income at Challenger and headed up the Labor government’s Super System Review in 2009, told Challenger investors that the ‘zeitgeist’ has shifted in recent years.
“[During] the Super System Review that I chaired, the retirement piece was seen to be too much too soon [and] too confronting – this is why we’ve got it back again under [the FSI],” he said.
In addition, Mr Cooper listed a series of comments by FSI chair Mr Murray that indicate his change in attitude, beginning with a speech Mr Murray gave in Sydney when he was still chair of the Future Fund.
“He told a whole lot of luminaries in the superannuation and financial services market that they had the 70/30 asset allocation in default funds upside down. It should be 30/70,” said Mr Cooper.
“The message that [Mr Murray] was giving was that its [default funds are] far too equitised and have far too much risk,” he said.
In his role as FSI chair, Mr Murray is continuing to make “similar noises”, said Mr Cooper.
Mr Murray has variously indicated that the superannuation industry’s focus is too short term, that it must be more invested in infrastructure, and that it needs to be better aligned with the needs of members in retirement, said Mr Cooper.
In addition, Mr Murray has suggested that there are not enough products in the marketplace to meet the needs of retirees, and there should be greater incentives for annuitisation, said Mr Cooper.
“You couldn’t get much more specific types of pointers and clues from the guy running this inquiry,” said Mr Coooper.
“I have slightly cherry picked this, but I think if you went and looked at all of his pronouncements you would see a definite tilt towards retirement income-style issues,” he said.
Retirement incomes also featured heavily in submissions to the FSI by the likes of Treasury, the Reserve Bank of Australia and the Financial Services Council, said Mr Cooper.
“This isn’t Murray out there [on his own] – this is the zeitgeist, this is the current mood out there,” he said.
