Brighter Super's recent product enhancements

1 July 2024

Brighter Super keeps you updated on important changes to fees, charges, insurance, and investment options that affect your retirement savings.

During the 2023/24 financial year, we made significant improvements to our products and services following the merger of three funds into Brighter Super.

Here's a summary of these changes.

Change of insurer to Zurich

On 1 July 2023, following a competitive tender process, Zurich was appointed as Brighter Super’s lead insurer for former LGIA Super members. They delivered a comprehensive proposal featuring a range of strategic and financial benefits, including:

• No change to insurance cover or premiums.
• Improvements to the terms and conditions, including removal of the sunset clause and enhancement to the war exclusion terms.
• Access to a new health and wellbeing app called LiveWell.

Read more in the Significant Event Notice dated 12 September 2023.

Retirement Health Checks

In February we launched the Retirement Health Check, a new service to help our members prepare for retirement.

Members aged 55 and over can have a 30-45 minute phone appointment with one of our financial advisers to see if they are on track to reach their retirement income goals¹. The adviser can also give a general overview of the different ways to keep growing super and, based on the information discussed, they will prepare a retirement projection report for you.

There is a fee to cover the cost of this service, which can be paid from your super account if you wish.

Find out more: Retirement Health Check

Member Reports

Since January this year, members have been able to download reports about their account at any time, with details such as balance, transactions, and investment earnings. This means you no longer have to wait for your Annual Benefit Statement each year to view this information.

The reports can also be generated by listed financial advisers who have been authorised by a member.

To try this new service, log in to your account in Member Online, and select Member Reports on the left-hand navigation.

You can also read our guide, How to read your Member Report, which provides a snapshot of important information within the report and what it means.

Delivering streamlined investment options and low fees

As part of our continuing commitment to being ‘brighter together’, from 31 May 2024 we made a number of important changes to our fee arrangements and investment options, in line with our commitment to improve our service offer and reduce costs.

These changes further realise the benefits of our mergers and were designed to help you grow your retirement savings. They included:

• A streamlined set of investment options, giving all members access to unlisted assets held by the fund and to a range of multi-manager strategies.
• Investment fee reductions across most of our investment options.
• Administration fee reductions of up to almost 70% for some members.
• A consistent administration fee cap, reducing the cap for some members by around 70% (to $900 per financial year for all investment options).
• Greater fee transparency with a move to direct administration fees across the board, so administration fees and tax rebates will be listed separately on Member Online and in your Annual Benefit Statement.

We also retired the ‘Optimiser’ product name as we move forward with Brighter Super Accumulation and Brighter Super Pension.

Read more in our Significant Event Notice dated 22 April 2024. You can also view our short video featuring Brighter Super CEO, Kate Farrar, and retirement advocate, David ‘Kochie’ Koch.

Introducing the Retire Easy Pension

On 31 May 2024, Brighter Super launched Retire Easy Pension, the first stage of our new Retirement Income Strategy that is designed to help more members live comfortably in retirement.

The Retire Easy Pension strategy is based on a ‘bucket’ approach, which involves dividing your money into three buckets – with the first allowing for two years' worth of regular income payments, and the second and third buckets invested in assets that will continue to grow over the medium and long term.

Retire Easy Pension is an opt-in arrangement, which current or new members can choose, featuring pre-selected investment and payment options for your Pension account that automatically update over time.

The default arrangement will continue to be our existing account strategy, which is more suited to members who want the flexibility to choose and manage their own investment and payment options.

Learn more about our Retire Easy Pension.