Women and Superannuation 

Hi everyone, I'm Caroline Melocco, a relationship manager at Equip Super.

Thank you for taking the time out to come along to our women in super session. Today's session is a condensed version of the regular session that we run for our employers.

Before I begin, I do need to give you a general advice warning. I'm only licensed to give general advice not personal advice, so please do consider your personal situation before making any investment decisions or otherwise. You can find a copy of our product disclosure statement, target market determination document, and financial services guide on our website.

Let's start with some statistics from the United Nations data hub. Innovation from a team that includes at least one woman are proven to be more economically valuable and have higher impact than those with only men involved. Only two out of 10 jobs in science, engineering and technology are held by women. Globally 55% is the decrease in a women's earnings after becoming a parent in in the first 5 years while men stay the same. 2.8 hours is the amount of time that women spend on additional unpaid care and domestic work. Sadly, a quarter of women have experienced physical or sexual violence since the age of 15 and we believe that a lack of financial literacy may contribute to this. And finally, in a standard 9-to-5 work day, 3:56 p.m. is the time that women are essentially working for free as a result of the gender pay gap.

I want you to think about how long you spend planning your holidays. I've been doing this for a long time now and usually what I hear is that most people will have a two-week holiday each year and plan for that holiday for around 6 months. Retirement hopefully will be the longest holiday you'll ever take. So, if we're planning for our two week holidays for 6 months we really need to be planning for this hopefully longest holiday of our lives for as long as we can.

Let's talk about women and super have a look at some stats and why things are the way that they are. If we look at a women's standard career, it's often very different. Woman will start work, have a career break often, whether that's to have children or care for others, then she may come back to work and continue working, but perhaps only part-time, sometimes part-time forever, and finally she'll often retire earlier, which means she starts using her superannuation sooner and the contributions stop.

Some facts and statistics about women in super and why things are the way they are. 47.4% of the workforce are women, 28% is the superannuation gap on medium balances for 60-to-64 year olds with women retiring with less super than men, 34% of older single women live in poverty, 4 years is the average time that women live longer than men so we need our super to last longer, and sadly only a third of government tax concessions on super go to women. Finally, almost twice as many women spend more than 5 hours per day on caring for children than men.

On this slide here you can see some average superannuation balances. This data comes from ASFA, the Association of Superannuation Funds of Australia. We can see that from inception there is a superannuation gap between males and females. If we have a look at 45-to-49 year olds we can see that the superannuation Gap is nearly $50,000.

The key factors behind the gender superannuation gap. 14.1% is the current gender pay gap in Australia. Female graduate starting salary is 12.4% lower than their male counterparts and only slightly better three years after graduation.

At 11.5% the current Superannuation Guarantee payments that you receive from your employer may not be enough for you to accrue enough retirement savings and approximately half a million people emptied their superannuation accounts under Covid-19 Provisions. If we have a look at an example, a 30-year-old that took out $20,000 in Covid with a starting balance of $40,000 would be approximately $80,000 worse off in retirement.

Now the good news is that you can re-contribute any amounts up to the $20,000 that you took out of your super and you can do this until the 30th of June 2030. So we believe that looking at your superannuation once or twice a year for 20 minutes can make a really big difference. Let me show you how.

Four big ideas to help you get the best possible outcome in retirement. Stashing some extra cash. This refers to making additional contributions. If you can afford to make additional contributions, depending on your own budget, this will make a difference to your retirement balance as well as giving you the benefit of compounding interest over the long term. There's lots of different things that we can talk about here around contributions cap limits and you can get more information in our full session.

Then, if we have a look at stretching out a safety net via insurances and beneficiary nominations. Most people will have a default level of insurance within their superannuation fund. It's important to know what insurance you have. Make sure you've got the right level of cover but you're not paying for cover that you don't need. So have a look at the insurance portal to see what insurances you have.

Consider consolidating your super. Some people will keep more than one superannuation account for certain reasons. But if you do want to have a look at consolidating your superannuation go to the super section of our website.

And finally kicking your investments into gear. Your superannuation monies are invested for you. If you don't make a choice you'll be invested in our MySuper default option but we have a variety of superannuation options that you can select from. And if you feel like you need more personal assistance with this you can contact our team.

To conclude, we have a super health check that we've put together for you. Here you can work through each of these items which align with what I've spoken about today. If you feel like you do need some more information you can contact our helpline, your relationship manager, or talk to your employer about our full woman in super session where we cover each of these topics in a lot more detail.

Thank you for watching our presentation today.