If you’re considering switching banks / superannuation in Jan to kick off the new year, I occasionally share resources for researching all the options you have. There are a few links below.
Recently, the ABC did an investigation into “sustainable” investment options that several super funds offer.
Turns out that the filters on those sustainable options are pretty loose, meaning that people who sign up to what they believe is a sustainable and ethical superfund are tricked into investing into something that is “mostly sustainable, but still invests in fossil fuels” which is pretty shitty, and people are understandably annoyed about it.
So as always, it’s on us to do our own research. Access to tools, research, and investigations like the ABC’s really help, so here are just a few:
👉 The ABC Investigation here (their summary: the only truly ethical options are Future Super, Australian Ethical, ESSSuper and Prime Super).
Links I’ve shared before are from the Market Forces website. They manage a pretty large set of data on banks and superfunds, so it gets updated every few years (most recently this year for some of it).
👉 Market Forces Superannuation research here
👉 Market Forces Bank research here
Both banks and super funds promise that switching is super quick.
My personal experience was that switching super funds really was super quick – I switched to Future Super via a form on my phone. From memory I needed one detail I didn’t have to hand (I don’t remember what exactly, some account number I think) but otherwise, everything they needed was stuff I could find easily like my bank details, drivers licence number etc. The form was done in a few minutes, and the funds had been transferred within a few days. All very automatic and I could set and forget it.
Total time investment for Super Switch: Less than 10 minutes.
Switching banks was a different story. I switched to Bank Australia, and the process was less “switch” and more open-new-accounts-here-then-close-old-accounts-there, which meant I had to change every direct debit and subscription manually. Some banks say they can do this automatically for you and I believe they can do some of it, but in general I believe you will be doing most manual switching yourself. My bookkeeper was able to export a CSV of all of my debits and subscriptions, so I could just chip through and update them all.
Total time investment for Bank Switch: A couple hours a day for I think about 3 days.
To be honest, I put off the bank switch for a long time knowing it was going to be manual. It was something that weighed on my mind though and since I’ve done it, I just don’t think about it anymore.
For some reason, I put off the super switch even longer… then the night I did it I was like “why did I not just do that at literally any point in the last four-or-so years!?”.
So my advice: Switch super for some quick momentum, then when you know your retirement money is clean but your bank money still isn’t, use that momentum to prep for the bank switch by exporting a list all your direct debits and subscriptions from your current bank, then make the jump.
Good luck 👍
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