Throughout your working life it’s unlikely that you will remain with the one employer until retirement. This means that it’s likely you will accumulate several super funds. Having a number of super funds may result in you paying additional fees, as well as you struggling to keep track of your funds and how your money is invested. This may not be the best outcome for your retirement savings. You should consider combining, or consolidating, your super accounts into one.

What are the benefits?

Save on fees

The more super funds you have, the more you may be paying in administration fees. By combining your super into one account, you could reduce the cost of saving for your retirement as you may reduce the need to pay multiple administration and/or member fees, and/or qualify for fee rebates due to an increased account balance.

Ease of management

Having all your super savings in one account reduces your paperwork and makes it easier to keep track of where your super is invested and how it’s performing. Whether you should combine your super depends largely on your financial goals and objectives and your financial adviser can help.

What are the disadvantages?

Before you combine your various super funds together, you should first check if there are any fees for closing a super account, known as a withdrawal, transfer, exit or termination fees. For some older types of super funds these fees can be very high. In addition, you should confirm if there are any benefits that you may lose, such as insurance cover. Your financial adviser can help you work out if you should combine your existing super funds.

Have you lost track of your super?

You can keep track of all your super funds using the ATO online services through the MyGov website.