John Cameron's personal blog

Imagine the following. You know a young couple with a family, a mortgage, and all the other commitments that go with modern family life.

Then, tragically, one day one of the parents is killed.

When the survivor gets him or herself back together after a few days, the survivor contacts their insurance company, to lodge a claim, only to be told that their insurance has been cancelled because of changed government laws.

At last, I’ve made it. Here I am battling away for years and then, all of a sudden I get the phone call out of the blue. It reminds me of that old show business saying: “After 20 years of slugging away, all of a sudden I am an overnight success.”

I’m sure the callers must have picked me out for special attention, based on some achievement that I can’t quite identify. Surely they wouldn’t call just anybody. Would they?

Enough of the levity.

Anybody following the Hayne Royal Commission could be excused for thinking our superannuation system is broken. It is not – although parts of it need serious repair.

An excellent article in the Australian Financial Review of 18-19 August, addressed and dispelled a number of myths surrounding the superannuation system.

The author of the Chanticleer column identified the following myths:

Good question. When you look beneath the surface of the Account Based Pensions offered by major superannuation funds, the answer is “quite a lot”.

How well an Account Based Pension serves you depends on its returns, and the risks taken to get those returns. Any financial planner worth his or her fee can help you structure a portfolio that provides a risk/return trade-off that meets your needs, both initially and, most importantly, over the years

The major tool to manage risk is “asset allocation”. This is a simple idea, and it relates to how much you have in safe, low risk investments, such as term deposits, cash and short term Government bonds, compared with how much you have in more volatile (but potentially higher yielding) investments such as shares, and property.

It’s that time of year again, where super funds are strutting their stuff, and the best performers are crowing about their place in the league tables of fund returns.

But, there is a dirty little secret to this exercise – it only tells half the story. The funds boast about their performance, but mention nothing of the risks they took to get that performance.

Mostly, they focus on the performance of their “balanced” option, which is usually understood to be a middle of the road mix of defensive and growth investments.