Brighter Super taps IFAs to enhance adviser | Australian Markets

Brighter Super has boosted its partnerships with unbiased financial advisers (IFAs) in an effort to “scale up” its advice capabilities for members, as well as to increasing its business development crew in Queensland.

The fund mentioned the development would guarantee all members have entry to the instruments, assets and steerage needed to obtain their retirement objectives.

It comes because the the Brighter Super & Investment Trends 2024 Retirement Income Report discovered that solely 39 per cent of retirees have engaged a financial adviser for info on retirement, which Brighter Super chief government, Kate Farrar, mentioned displays that not all advice for the fund’s members could be “delivered by its internal advice team”.

At the time of the analysis paper’s construction and release, Brighter Super was mentioned to have been working with 1,300 IFAs to enhance its advice offering to members; the partnerships introduced now cowl more than 1,500 IFAs.

“Our purpose is for each member to retire with advice and bridging the advice hole is vital to securing a higher retirement for Australians,’’ Farrar mentioned.

“We have a good understanding of the place our inside crew is best positioned to present advice, however we additionally recognise that some members require more specialised help.

“We need to make it simpler for exterior advisers to work with us and to present them with the help they need to ship the best outcomes for his or her purchasers, our members.’’

The report additionally uncovered the presence of an advice hole amongst pre-retirees, of which 47 per cent felt unprepared for retirement. This is in contrast to the 55 per cent of pre-retirees who felt more assured forward of retirement after receiving info or steerage to change their investment choices.

To help IFAs as they give the impression of being to ship advice companies for Brighter Super members the fund mentioned it had applied a number of initiatives, together with updating its Adviser Online portal, connecting a devoted telephone line for advisers and different options equivalent to:

• Allowing all advice price varieties to be charged by IFAs;
• Allowing IFAs to change members to pension accounts;
• Enabling direct doc uploads to the portal;
• Accepting digital signatures from members and advisers on most varieties; and
• Making it simpler for advisers to entry up-to-date info sheets and investment updates from the fund.

To be rolled out at a later date is an enhanced restricted transaction authority for IFAs.