How much are multiple accounts costing you?

“You’ll be paying fees on all of your accounts, even the ones you haven’t contributed to for years, which could be eating away at the balance and negatively affecting your retirement outcome. Multiple accounts make your super easier to lose, and take more time, attention and paperwork,” explains smartMonday smartCoach Christopher Haddad.

The solution is to combine your super into one account. smartMonday has an easy process to help you find and consolidate accounts and put you back in control. This is likely to deliver three key benefits (though you may like to first speak with your financial adviser or one of our smartCoaches).

Don’t pay more in fees and insurance than you need to. For each account you’ll commonly be charged a member fee, administration fee and investment fee.

“Your total super account fees can easily add up to many thousands of dollars over a lifetime. Generally, if you've got two accounts, you could be reducing your overall retirement balance,” adds Haddad.

In addition, you could have insurance in each account for which you’ll pay a premium from your super balance. (Keep in mind you may lose insurance if you consolidate your funds – but it can usually be transferred to smartMonday, so check with us first.)

One account is easier to manage than multiple ones: you’ll only have to do paperwork once to choose your investment option, insurance, nominate a beneficiary and organise any further contributions you want to make.

“It’s important for people to be aware of what’s happening with their super. We find members that have only one account can see how their super is progressing at a glance, giving them a clear, central focus as they consider what they need for the future,” says Haddad.

Paying less fees means more money in your super: Rainmaker found that a doubling of total super fees meant 20% less in super at retirement. With the average super balance (at age 65) about $350,000, that's $70,000 less for your retirement plans.

And a higher balance means greater compound returns for you: David’s story below gives you an idea how this works.

David at age 30 found he had $14,500 sitting in another super fund. He consolidated that into his main super account. Now that he and his partner are 65 years old, he realises, thanks to compound interest and finding his lost super, that $14,500 investment has grown to $36,000, which he previously wouldn’t have known about. With the additional $36,000 in David’s account, he and his partner now potentially have an extra year’s worth of retirement income in today’s money.1,2