Financial market update

Accumulation members

For Employers using SAFF, the address details changes will automatically flow through to Vision Super via their file.

DB Members and ad-hoc address updates for Accumulation members

Employers can update an address for a member anytime via the Employer Online portal. Go to Member Maintenance > Search for and select the member > Click Edit and the follow the prompts.

Accumulation members

For Employers using SAFF, the Termination details will automatically flow through to Vision Super via their file.

DB Members and ad-hoc Terminations for Accumulation members

Employers can process a Termination for a member anytime either by submitting Form 19 which you can find on the website under resources or via the Employer Online portal. Just following the path Member Maintenance > Search for and select the member > Click Terminate and the follow the prompts.

Please send an email to [email protected] detailing your request or call the Employer Hotline on 1300 304 947

We do not currently charge a fee to use our Clearinghouse solution, but per the Clearinghouse agreement we do reserve the right to change this at any time.

You can reset your password by visiting the Employer login page and clicking the Forgotten your password link.

If you have any issues with resetting your password, please call the Employer Hotline on 1300 304 947.

If you call us on 1300 304 947 we can arrange for booklets and PDS to be delivered as well as our induction video that’s available for new employees.

No, there are no costs involved.

You can claim certain deductions on contributions made to complying super funds on behalf of employees under the age of 75.

For employees over 75, you may only claim a deduction if an industrial award, determination or state award agreement requires a contribution.

There are rules and exclusions that apply so make sure you’re familiar with the information provided on the ATO’s website.

When an employee is 18 or over you must pay them superannuation guarantee (SG) which is 10.5% of their Ordinary Time Earnings, to super. If the employee is under 18, they must also work for more than 30 hours per week to qualify for SG. Exceptions apply.  Please refer to the ATO website for more information.

If you change your employer in most instances you can request, they pay your super into your Vision Super account. Simply fill in the Choice of Fund form and hand it in to your payroll officer.

If you have to go with your employers default super fund you may be able to keep your insurance benefits with us because your insurance cover with Vision Super doesn’t necessarily cease when you change employers (provided that you satisfy the terms and conditions contained within the relevant insurance policy).

We’d encourage you to talk to us before you engage a lawyer. Vision Super pays more than 85% of insurance claims, so the likelihood is your claim will be paid if you work with us directly, and you’ll end up with more of your money. Many lawyers advertise that they’ll work for you on a ‘no win, no fee’ basis, but if your claim is approved, they may take a large chunk of your payout – it can be around 30% of an entitlement. Our insurance team is here to help you through every step of the claims process, including all the paperwork, without having to get a lawyer involved and potentially losing money you need to pay for medical treatment or maintain your lifestyle.

Call us on 1300 300 820 and we will answer any questions and send you the required information.

Yes, you can cancel your cover at any time. Any cancellation or reduction of cover will take effect from the date we receive your request or the date you specified in your request (as long as it’s after the date we receive it). If you are replacing your existing cover with an alternative cover, before cancelling we recommend that you have your replacement cover in place first. To talk to us about cancelling a policy, please call us on 1300 300 820.

If you are thinking about changing your insurance please consider seeking financial advice before making any changes to make sure it is right for you and your needs and circumstances.

You may be able to get cover if you have a pre-existing medical condition. You will just need to apply to remove the pre-existing condition exclusion when you join by filling in a Personal Statement. Our Insurer will review your application taking into consideration any pre-existing conditions and general health and advise if your request has been accepted.

If your application is unsuccessful,  there will be a two-year Pre-Existing Condition (PEC) exclusion on Death and TPD cover and Income Protection cover. This means that no benefit will be paid if you are totally and permanently disabled, terminally ill or die as a direct or indirect result of a pre-existing medical condition in the first two years of your insurance cover.

You can have multiple income protection policies, and there are legitimate reasons why people choose more than one product.

However, some income protection policies prevent claimants from receiving more than a certain percentage of their gross salary while off work. What that means is you could have three income protection policies that all offer payments equalling 75 per cent of your gross salary, but you wouldn’t be able to claim the full amount from all three. You would typically be limited to a combined maximum of 75 per cent across the policies.

Yes. You can have more than one death, or death and TPD policy in addition to the one you hold in your Vision Super account. However, depending on your circumstances rather than managing multiple policies it might be as simple as increasing the cover you have with us without the need for further medical assessments. It is generally more cost-effective to have one policy so that you are not paying premiums on more than one policy.

Increases in cover in Vision Super may require a medical assessment. If you are considering cancelling cover you hold outside of Vision Super and replacing it with cover in Vision Super, we recommend you call us first on 1300 300 820. Please consider seeking financial advice before making any changes to make sure your insurance is right for you and your needs and circumstances.

These items reflect short-term liabilities such as overdrafts and margins that need to be posted to collateral accounts for strategies using exchange traded derivatives following certain market moves.

Our Australian equities managers invest in portfolios of predominantly Australian companies. This may well include companies that are property or infrastructure businesses, which are classified as Listed Property or Listed Infrastructure in the portfolio holdings reporting. Similarly, the cash holdings within these portfolios will be reported as Cash.

The rules the government has put in place for super funds are designed to provide greater transparency about underlying investments and place increased focus on trustee’s ensuring their only consideration, when investing, is to act in the best financial interests of our members.  We also take the environmental, social and governance (ESG) performance of companies into account because the research shows that companies that perform well on these factors have better long-term performance. More detail on the way we factor ESG considerations into our decision-making, including our overarching investment beliefs and divestments framework, is set out in our ESG Policy.

However, if we excluded every company that someone ‘might not like’ from our portfolio, we would have an increasingly narrow field of possible investments. People have a wide range of views on companies they believe we shouldn’t invest in – this list would cover everything from dairy companies, to fashion brands, medical research, gaming and banks.

Restricting our investments like this would almost certainly reduce adequate diversification and impact on portfolio performance over the longer term – which runs counter to our core obligation to act in the best financial interests of our members.

Vision Super excludes companies that are identified by our ESG data provider as having any involvement in the production of tobacco. Vaping companies are also excluded. Our approach is broadly consistent with the Tobacco-Free Finance Pledge under the auspices of Tobacco Free Portfolios and the UNEP Finance Initiative to which we are a signatory.

Our decision to divest from tobacco producers also reflects the risk that the returns from these companies will be adversely impacted by litigation and/or regulation. The full list of companies that we consider to be prohibited investments is available on our website here.

Controversial weapons are ones that can have a severe impact on civilians, and are generally banned under international treaties. Land mines, cluster bombs and nuclear weapons are deemed to be particularly controversial because of their indiscriminate impacts on civilians and the disproportionate harm they cause – in the case of land mines, for many years after a conflict has ended. Despite being widely considered to be controversial and often prohibited by international treaties, these weapons are still produced in some parts of the world.

Vison Super excludes companies that generate:

> More than 5% of revenue from critical components for nuclear weapons.

> Any revenue from critical components of anti-personnel mines, cluster munitions or depleted uranium weaponry.

The full list of companies that we consider to be prohibited investments is available on our website here.

The Fund has some exposure to mining companies.  Mining remains integral to the global economy, including the necessary transition to a renewable economy through the manufacture of renewable energy infrastructure such as wind turbines and solar panels.

Our exposure to fossil fuels is implemented through carbon intensity restrictions for our listed equity portfolios. The listed equity asset classes are managed with an approach that aims to provide meaningfully less carbon-intensive exposure versus the respective benchmarks (based on ISS data on scope 1 and 2 carbon intensity levels). Our listed equity carbon intensity restrictions are fund-wide and apply to listed equities across our options.

For further information please refer to our carbon budget page

Our exposure to fossil fuels is implemented through carbon intensity restrictions for our listed equity portfolios. For further information please refer to our Carbon budget page

You can find detailed information about our fund-wide exclusions from companies that produce harmful products such as tobacco and controversial weapons on our Company exclusions page

As at 30 June 2023, we have exposure to China in the fund’s international listed equities investments as well as in the global fixed interest and alternative debt portfolios. We have no direct exposure to China via our unlisted assets. It is important to note that other parts of the portfolio are exposed to China, even if they are not Chinese businesses. China is the second largest economy in the world and Australia’s largest trading partner. What happens in China matters for the global economy and asset markets. We also have exposure to many companies where Chinese consumers or businesses are major customers or suppliers, for example, global companies like Apple, Nike and Boeing, as well as resource companies such as BHP and Rio Tinto.

The exposure to China can vary significantly across the range of investment options. Generally speaking, investment options with a higher allocation to shares have more exposure to China.

Centrelink needs to know some details so they can calculate payments such as the age pension. We provide this information directly to Centrelink electronically, on your behalf, every February and August. You can request a Centrelink schedule from Vision Super at any time.

No. Once you have opened an account you cannot make any additional contributions. However, you can close your existing account and open a new account, combining any additional contributions with your existing balance.

Important to know: Government changes to deeming rules could affect you if you choose to close your current account and open a new one. To find out whether your entitlements – including the age pension – could be reduced, we recommend seeking financial advice first.

Your regular pension income payments will be paid directly to a personal or joint bank account nominated by you in your application form. You can choose to receive payments twice monthly, monthly, bimonthly, quarterly, four-monthly, six-monthly or annually.

You have access to make lump sum withdrawals (over and above your pension (income)) payments from a retirement pension however, with a transition to retirement pension lump sum withdrawals are limited and you can only commute your pension by transferring your account balance into an accumulation product.

You need to have met preservation age and have a minimum investment amount of $10,000. Other eligibility conditions apply. Refer to the Vision Super Income Streams PDS for further details.

Eligibility for the government age pension depends on your age, residency status, and the income and assets tests. How much you receive is subject to the income you receive from other sources (including your superannuation) plus the value of your assets. If you are eligible, for all or part of the government age pension, then combining it with your Vision Super pension can work well. You can use the age pension to meet basic living costs and spending money can come from your Vision Super pension.

When you open your Pension account, you’ll have the option of nominating your spouse as a ‘reversionary beneficiary’. This means that if you die, the account will change ownership to your spouse and regular payments from the account will be paid to the spouse. Your spouse will then have the option of withdrawing the account balance if he/she meets preservation age and other rules. Alternatively, you can nominate one or more binding or preferred non-binding beneficiary (the beneficiary must be your dependant and/or legal personal representative when you die).

How long it will last depends on the amount of money you start with, the rate at which you withdraw income (or lump sums), and other factors such as investment returns and fees. There is no guarantee your Retirement Income Stream will provide an income for the rest of your life and payment will only continue to be made until your account balance is exhausted. Ensuring you plan and budget appropriately may assist with helping your money last. The Retirement income calculator may be able to help see if your super is on track and plan where you would like to be.

Our retire with us section can help you understand the steps you need to take to start planning for your retirement. You can:

• Review your current situation
• Work out what your goals are
• Explore strategies to increase your savings
• Use a range of tools and resources.

You can also enter your current super balance into the Retirement income calculator and receive a projection of the estimated annual retirement income you could receive once you stop working. Try it now to see what you might be able to achieve using a few basic strategies.

Where the ATO identifies multiple funds that may be stapled to an employee, tiebreaker rules will apply:

1. The most recent fund identified by the ATO will be the employee’s stapled fund for the selected period (from the start of the previous financial year until the day when the ATO applies tiebreaker requirements).
2. If 1. doesn’t apply, it will be the fund that received the most recent contribution over the selected period.
3. If 1. and 2. don’t apply, it will be the fund that held the largest balance at the end of the previous financial year.
4. If none of the above applies, the ATO will consider factors like when an employee joined a fund and other relevant information to identify the stapled fund.
5. Employees will also be able to see details of their stapled super fund in their MyGov account.

If you are doing this for a single member and not using the ATO’s bulk upload service, the ATO expects results to be available within minutes.

If the ATO provides a stapled super fund response to an employer, they will contact the employee and advise them of the request.

Employees will receive an SMS if they have a valid mobile number in the ATO records and/or a letter (through myGov or paper) advising who has requested the information and more details on the options available to the employee.

Yes, it applies to all employers.

Existing employees aren’t affected by these changes. You must continue to make their compulsory superannuation guarantee (SG) payments into the same super fund account you do today.

Yes, you still need a default fund. If a new employee starts on or after 1 November 2021, and neither nominates a fund nor has an existing fund, you will pay their contributions to your default fund.

If an employee doesn’t have a super account –this maybe their first job – and doesn’t nominate one with a Choice of fund form, you must pay their super into your default fund.

Bulk requests are available from the ATO where the request is for over 100 staff. The ATO provides a form where employers need to request stapled super fund details for over 100 new starters at once. Bulk requests will have a service standard of up to 5 business days. The bulk request will need to be in a xls or xlsx file that can be downloaded from the ATO from 1 November 2021.

You or an authorised representative will need to log in to the ATO online services. You will then be asked to enter your employee’s details, including:

• Tax File Number, or an exemption code where an employee cannot provide their TFN
• Full name, including ‘other given name’ if known
• Birth date
• Address (residential or postal), if TFN not given.

When you have entered these details, within minutes you will receive an on-screen response in the online services and confirmation that the ATO will notify your employee that you have made a stapled super fund request, as well as the fund details that the ATO provided.

We’re required to have Target Market Determinations under the Treasury Laws Amendment (Design and Distribution Obligations and Product Intervention Powers) Act 2019.

This is to make sure we’re keeping members at the centre of our approach to the design and distribution of our financial products.

This legislation requires financial services product issuers to design products that are appropriate for the consumers in the target market and consistent with their objectives, financial situation, and needs.

A Target Market Determination is a document which describes who a product is appropriate for (target market), and any conditions around how the product can be distributed to customers.

It also describes the events or circumstances where we may need to review the Target Market Determination for a financial product.

It depends how your details have been changed. The most common request is changing a surname due to marriage, which you can do with a certified copy of your marriage certificate, and a Vision Super “Change of Personal Details form” found here: view form

If you have changed your name another way, we recommend you contact us first on 1300 300 820 so we can outline what documents we need to change your details without issue.

If you want to change your address, you can do this by logging onto the secure member portal online, or calling our Member Services team on 1300 300 820.

You can check your balance 24/7 via Vision Online, our secure member secure site, or via the Vision Super app for mobile devices. You can also contact our Member Services on 1300 300 820 or by emailing us on [email protected]

Here’s how it works. You may be able to receive a tax-free contribution from the Government when you make a non-concessional (after-tax) contribution to your super account.  The maximum entitlement that can be received is $500 where your total income is $43,445 or less in the 2023/24 year. This reduces on a sliding scale and cuts out if your total income is above $58,445 in the 2023/24 year.

This is, of course, provided you satisfy income and age tests.

Please note that the income threshold test for the co-contribution is your total income, which is calculated as follows:

Total income (assessable income + reportable fringe benefits + reportable employer super contributions – allowable business deductions).

If you’re contributing by BPAY, it can take Vision Super up to two business days to receive your contribution, then up to three business days to process, although most are done the same day they are received. This will depend upon your financial institution’s processing times.

If you’re contributing by cheque, you will need to allow enough time for your chosen postage method to reach us. Once it has arrived, it can take up to five working days to process.

We can also process contributions by EFT, however, this may take up to three business days.

Best Doctors can help you if you are dealing with an illness, or a chronic or serious condition.

Through your insurance, you and your family get access to Best Doctors which connects you with a network of 50,000 leading medical specialists from around the world. It offers a second opinion when you need it most, to make sure you received the right diagnosis and are on the best treatment plan. You can use Best Doctors at anytime, anywhere, as often as you need for no extra cost, and it’s completely confidential.

Our platinum rating from SuperRatings mean we’re in the top 25% of super funds rated by SuperRatings for best value for money superannuation. We’ve been awarded the rating 11 years in a row.

Vision Super members pay an administration fee to cover the administrative and operational costs of the the Fund and Trustee. For more information, please read the relevant guide for fees and costs.