Watch out for the not so superratings

I’ve been perusing Superrating’s top 10 funds as you do on a Sunday afternoon. (Yep, I’m a money geek). I’ve found the results they provide to be at best a little simplistic and at worst misleading.

My problem is that they only compare the fees that would be charged on a superannuation balance of $50,000. What if you don’t have 50 big ones in your super account? Well in short ANZ Smart Choice Super might not be the smart choice afterall!

Fees comprise of a fixed cost AND a percentage cost. This means the fees you pay depend on the balance in YOUR account.

Here’s the top 10 funds with the lowest fees (for 50k balance) taken from the superratings website. (http://www.superratings.com.au/top-tens/fees)

Screenshot from 2014-11-30 17:06:13

Now lets see what happens when you jiggle the balance a bit. I’ll take 3 of the funds from above, ANZ Smart Choice Super, Bendigo MySuper and ING DIRECT Super:

ANZ Smart Choice Super Bendigo MySuper ING DIRECT Super Fees on $5,000 per year 75 98 37.5 Fees on $50,000 per year 300 313 375 Fees on $500,000 per year 2,550 2,248 3,750

As you can see, if you only have $5,000 in super, then ING DIRECT Super ($37.5) actually costs less than ANZ Smart Choice Super ($75). If you’re lucky enough to have 500,000 smackers in super then the fees on the ANZ Smart Choice Super actually end up costing you about $300 more a year than Bendigo MySuper.

Here’s the breakdown of the fixed and percentage fee the super funds charge.

ANZ Smart Choice Super Bendigo MySuper ING DIRECT Super Member Fee ($ per year) 50 98 NA Admin Fee (% per year) NA NA 0.5 Investment Fee (% per year) 0.5 0.43 0.25

So just be careful with these comparison tables, they are a little too simplistic for my liking and could end up costing you money…YOU MIGHT INDEED BE SURPRISED

Be also aware that this superratings data is also used by other comparison websites such as http://www.findmybestsuper.com.au.

As always, don't get ripped off people :-)