Superannuation is getting political.
Especially when Greg Combet was recently appointed to head the Future Fund, WOW it is becoming a full house of representatives, in the super sector.
The super giant’s chairman was hauled before a Senate committee, where he was grilled over the governance failings engulfing the embattled fund.
Cbus chair Wayne Swan has defended the controversial appointments of three CFMEU-linked directors to the board of the $94 billion superannuation giant, as he apologised to 10,000 members who waited too long to receive their death and disability benefits.
Swan was hauled before a Senate committee on Friday morning, where he was grilled over the governance failings engulfing the embattled fund, including its links to the disgraced construction union and a Federal Court action for allegedly failing to process insurance claims in a timely manner.
During an at-times testy exchange between Swan and Liberal MP Andrew Bragg, a heavy critic of industry super funds, the committee also heard Cbus had handed the prudential regulator an independent report it had been ordered to conduct into its governance, and the entire superannuation sector was grappling with issues stemming from third-party administrator Link.
“I want to apologise to all those who’ve been affected in our fund and that we, as a board, when we first became aware of the magnitude of this problem set out to rectify this problem, and something like 80 per cent of the unresolved cases have now been dealt with,” Swan said.
“We are also engaged in a very substantial uplift in our fund across the whole area of risk management, and part of the restructuring of the executive in our fund in recent times has been a new chief risk officer. So we have frameworks in place, and we are working with the regulators to ensure that they are the best possible frameworks.”