On 15 March 2021, Sunsuper and QSuper announced they had signed a Heads of Agreement to merge.
The merger is planned to proceed in September 2021 with integration to occur over one to two years. Members’ accounts will transfer into the merged fund on the merger date.
The funds suggest that the merger will result in lower costs for members and existing insurance cover (such as death, TPD or income protection) will continue. However, any future changes to insurance cover offered by the merged fund will be communicated to members.
If you are a member of Sunsuper or QSuper, you should consider whether the merger is right for you, or seek financial advice. We expect that the merger will result in altered insurance terms and will provide further information once we are aware of any potential changes to insurances within superannuation.
This merger will come about 5 years after Sunsuper launched a new total and permanent disability insurance product where instead of being paid out the lump sum insurance, members are provided an annual payment, as 6 payments over 5 years, with a new assessment performed each year. In our practice we have observed the insurer attempting to reject further annual payments on the basis that the members had undergone retraining (at the insurer’s cost), and with that retraining now held the training and experience to preclude them from the insurance definition. With this merger, if the current Sunsuper insurance terms were to be adopted, some 2 million members might be subjected to this restrictive definition.
