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Find Your Lost Super Before It’s Transferred

In 2014 the Federal Treasury reported that there are 6 million “lost” superannuation accounts holding an amount of no less than $16 billion. With a new legislation in effect (since the end of 2015), any lost super that has balances less than $4,000 and was inactive for the last 12 months, will be transferred to the ATO funds.

Based on the Federal Treasury’s report, one out of every five superfund accounts are lost. The ATO defines a lost superfund when it is inactive, the member is uncontactable, or it has been transferred from another super provider. If in the last few years you changed your job, address, or name that was holding your superfund, chances are, your super account may already be reported as lost.

You can check with the Tax Office through SuperMatch or through the myGov service if you have a lost account with idle funds.

You can also refer to a new database recently published on the ATO website that contains a breakdown of lost super accounts per state with the number of lost accounts and their value.

In this report, New South Wales has the highest number of lost super accounts at 378,145 with a massive value of over $4 billion. Postcode 2000 or Sydney, has the highest lost super accounts (4,850) followed by postcode 2170 or Liverpool (both are from NSW) that has a total of over $44 million idle super funds. In Canberra, (post code 2600) there are 428 lost accounts with funds over $5 million, while in postcode 6000 in Perth has almost 2,000 lost super accounts with $12.8 million funds.

Here’s a summary of the report:

It will be best to take action of your lost funds now because on January 2017, the threshold for the minimum balance of idle accounts will increase to $6,000 from $4,000 this year.

If you need help managing your superannuation fund, please do not hesitate to contact us or call (08) 9301 2200.

written by:

McKinley Plowman