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Recent letter from the APSS about an increase in costs
If you’re an APSS member, you will have recently received a letter about an increase in ‘Indirect Costs’. This has caused some confusion among members, so the information below should help to clarify the change.
Firstly, the change does not affect your defined benefits. As an employee member in the APSS you pay no fees in the defined benefit.
The change only affects APSS members with member savings – this is money you have saved in addition to your defined benefit. If you don’t have member savings, the information is not relevant to you.
A few important points to note:
- This change isn’t an additional or new fee deducted directly from your APSS account – the costs that are changing are deducted before you are paid investment returns on your member savings (this is done using crediting rates each fortnight). This is why it’s called an ‘indirect cost’.
- The cost change is in proportion to the historically high investment returns credited to members’ APSS member savings accounts last financial year – when returns are high, the proportion of the fee paid to some of the investment firms used by the APSS also rises and the APSS must inform its members when this change happens.
- The cost change has nothing to do with the potential merger announced by the APSS last year. The merger has not yet happened.
- Like the APSS, many super funds will be reporting higher investment costs associated with their returns from the last financial year, because the returns themselves were high.
- The cost increase was not made by Australia Post or the APSS Trustee. It’s simply the difference between what the APSS Trustee estimated the costs would be at the start of the 2020-21 financial year and the actual costs advised by the relevant investment firms late in 2021. Remember, investment returns were historically high and this could not have been predicted at the start of the financial year.
If you have any further concerns, please contact your State Branch Official and your union will raise it directly with the APSS.
