MLC applies fee-for-service to super

MLC announced yesterday it will launch a fee-for-service superannuation platform with revised administration fees — its second fee-for-service product release this year.

MasterKey Super Fundamentals, set to go live on December 4, would enable MLC to continue to adapt to “the movement of advisers from commissions to fee-for-service operations,” Anthony Waldron, MLC general manager of superannuation and investments, said. Forty per cent of the National Australia Bank subsidiary’s written business in the year to date has come from a fee-for-service source. “There’s been a big increase in the number of fees charged rather than commissions, and we’re expecting that to continue,” Waldron said. The platform has no asset-based commissions built into its administration fees, instead requiring advisers and clients to negotiate a service fee. Such fees could be charged as either a one-off dollar amount, a dollar amount paid monthly, a percentage paid monthly, or a percentage of each superannuation contribution to the platform. In line with a new administration fee structure, the platform will also charge lower administration fees to bigger portfolios. John Salamito, MLC chief operating officer, said an annual administration fee of 0.77 per cent would be charged to accounts with balances ranging from $100,000 to less than $200,000, while an annual administration fee of 0.66 per cent would be charged to accounts of $400,000 or more until a fee refund applicable to such larger accounts lowers the fee to 0.34 per cent. The administration fees of MLC’s existing commission-based platform, MasterKey Superannuation, will also be reduced next week from 1.53 per cent annually to 1.32 per cent annually. In March, MLC released MasterKey Investment Service Fundamentals, an investor-directed, fee-for-service platform which marked its initial departure from commission-based products.