The corporate regulator said that Section 29QB of the Supervision Industry (Supervision) Act 1993 requires the superannuation industry to publish on their websites the details of executives, including remuneration, fund product disclosure statements, governing rules, actuarial reports and summaries of significant events.
However, this legislation does not specify exactly what this means in practice.
ASIC consequently issued Class Order 14/509, which clarifies how super funds can keep their website up to date and provides a safe harbour so that if information is updated within class order timeframes, the fund will be considered as having complied with its obligations.
Regulatory Guide 252 Keeping superannuation websites up to date provides a guide on these safe harbours’ work and demonstrates the operation of Class Order 14/509.
The regulatory guide said there is a safe harbour of 20 days for updating the details or changes to relevant executive officers and individual trustees.
The guide said information relating to the remuneration of relevant executive officers and individual trustees including employee benefits, termination benefits, payments for holding a position or for agreeing to hold a position, share-based payments and the terms and conditions of compensation for cash or performance-related bonuses must be updated within a four-month period.
The guidance also said there is a four-month release time for providing an explanation of how compensation is determined and for explaining the terms of the contract affecting compensation in future periods, as well as for providing notice if the terms of share-based payment transactions granted as compensation are modified or altered.
ASIC said if a super fund fails to comply with the Class Order it will be considered a breach of the super fund’s obligation to update information.
