Submission to the Cooper Review of Superannuation
I have written a submission to the Cooper Review of Superannuation (that is privatized social security) in Australia.
You can find it here.
The submission is entirely about asset security issues – that is can you be assured that the assets are really there? This is (obviously) of concern to people charged with looking after the (entire) retirement savings of tens of thousands of Australians. However I have also found it is a very useful conversation to have with anyone recently finding themselves in possession or care of many millions in financial assets. [If you run a small family office managing financial assets after you have (for instance) sold the family business then you should probably read it.]
The issues covered are broker and custodian failure (think Lehman failing and not returning assets to the clients) and also simple theft or misplacing of assets.
Under normal circumstances this would normally be (very) dry reading. However the events of the last two years have driven home the relevance.