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How To Find Lost Super Funds

By Sandy Naidu | April 24, 2008

It is estimated that there is approximately around $10 billion in lost super. Around 5.7 million Australians are estimated to have lost super…For some reason most of us seem to have a cavalier attitude towards lost super…Now assume for a second that you are entitled to $5000 of inheritance - you would want to claim this money as soon as you can, right….Why then don’t we make an effort to find out if we have some super money missing? Probably because we think it is too hard to find out or probably because we don’t know what we are missing and so we just assume its not worth making an effort….Even if you have just 100 dollars missing in super its worth the effort…100 dollars can add up to much more by the time you reach your retirement. And the good news - The government has made it really easy to find our lost super. In this post I will be outlining the steps you need to take to claim your lost super. But lets start with the basics -



Who Is A Lost Member



You become a lost member if:
* If you have changed addresses and forgot to notify your super fund of your new address - If correspondence sent to you is returned to your super fund then the fund can report you as a lost member.
* You became a member of an employer-sponsored super fund. But if your employer has made no contributions to the fund for five years or more then you are reported as an inactive or a lost member.
Once a fund labels some one as a ‘lost member’, it can, if it wishes keep the fund open. But most funds roll over the monies of the lost member into ‘Eligible Rollover Funds’ (ERFs).



So What Happens To Lost Members



All the lost members are reported to Australian Taxation Office (ATO). ATO maintains a lost members register. The first step in retrieving lost super is to search this database - more about this further down this post.



Could I Have Lost Super



Prior to super fund choice we were all stuck with employer sponsored super funds. So every time you changed jobs you had to roll over your super fund money into the new employer sponsored fund. If you did not do this then you could be listed in the lost members register (you could have lost super). If you are unsure if you rolled over all your super (as moved jobs), then just check the register - better to be safe than sorry.
If you changed names or addresses then you could be in the register.



Steps To Find Lost Super



ATO Super Seeker: You can search the lost members register either on their website or you can call them - Click Lost Member Super Register or ATO Super. If you are a lost member then the search will tell you the fund in which your lost super is. It will not give you any amounts. No complaints about that - Get the contact details of the fund and contact them and organise to rollover your lost super into the fund of your choice. The drawbacks of the Lost Members Register are:
Lost Super* Sometimes the super funds can just keep your accounts open and fail to report you as a lost member.
* The correspondence sent to you was sent to the wrong address but was not returned - so the super fund does not realise you are lost and hence does not report you as a lost member.

And so if you are not in the database but believe that you have some missing super, don’t give up yet…Do one of the following.

AUSFUND: A lot of super funds transfer the monies of lost members to AusFund…It is a industry eligible rollover fund…Similar to industry super funds but it is a rollover fund.

Manual Search: Contact each one of your previous employers, get the super details, contact the super funds and organise to transfer your money…Sometimes the super funds would have changed hands - then get the details of the new fund and contact them. Its a bit of a work but not impossible.
Apart from contacting employers you should also search the ‘unclaimed monies registers’. These registers are maintained separately for every state. Search for ‘Lost Monies Registers NSW’ in google and ‘Lost Monies Registers WA’ and so on so forth (basically search for all states).

Hire Some One: No not a detective…These days there are a lot of online companies that carry out an extensive search. Most of them charge you nothing. They do a thorough search and provide you with the results…Be careful here…Most of them actually charge nothing for the search but will automatically rollover the lost super into their default super fund. If you want them to rollover the monies into your choice then you have to pay them a small fee (usually between 50 to 75 dollars). The search as such is free in most cases…An example of a company which carries out this service is ‘FindMySuper.com.au’.

And finally one word of caution - Some people are happy to leave their lost super monies in ERFs (Eligible rollover funds). They might think as long as I search and find out whihc ERF holds my money, I should okay. They don’t see any point in transferring the money into their fund. This way they will end with many super funds. This is not good. You will end up losing a lot of money in fees. Consolidate all the money and have it one super fund - Lumpsum earns more than split funds. Also a lot of ERFs charge very high fees.

So start your search….Don’t let your money go waste…Its hard earned money after all !!!

A couple of years ago I recovered my lost super…It was a fairly straight forward process…What has your experience been?

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Topics: Retirement |

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