Both the financial planning community and the industry funds should pay for a joint independent report on their respective value to clients, according to Industry Fund Services (IFS) chief executive Gary Weaven.
“If we have a true independent random assessment of the average value of advice that we give of the funds in this room of the super funds that are being recommended against the industry funds performance I’m prepared to bet that you will look pretty poor,” Weaven told FPA conference delegates in Melbourne on Friday.
“You support the survey and we’ll support it too … this is actual members accounts to be surveyed on a true random representative basis.
“Lets looks at how its works and look at what is left in the members accounts at the end of the day over the last five years, over the last ten years, you chose the period.”
The call was made after Count chairman Barry Lambert questioned the risk return profiles of some of the unlisted assets within some IFS underlying investments and the availability of the appropriate research.
“It’s not rocket science to research and know the nature of industry funds,” Weaven said.
“There are questions on some of the managers of unlisted assets available on some ISF’s, so my point would be probably this, if you don’t want to recommend it and you don’t want to have that research done that’s fine because that would simply ensure that industry funds have a continued market place advantage.
“The whole thing is that people need to be accurate, particularly planners when they make these assertions,” he said
