Global Wealth Report, Australians are the world's richest

[Bakery Hill]

Perhaps lot of of those low value superannuation accounts could be as a result of this phenomenon: "Latest statistics show there are 3.4 million "lost" super accounts worth $16.8 billion and more than 2.8 million unclaimed super accounts totaling $887 million." Lost super accounts transferred to Tax Office "it is common for Australians to accumulate multiple super accounts as they change jobs, with many people failing to consolidate accounts."

[BCC_1]

Originally Posted by Bakery Hill

Perhaps lot of of those low value superannuation accounts could be as a result of this phenomenon: "Latest statistics show there are 3.4 million "lost" super accounts worth $16.8 billion and more than 2.8 million unclaimed super accounts totaling $887 million." Lost super accounts transferred to Tax Office "it is common for Australians to accumulate multiple super accounts as they change jobs, with many people failing to consolidate accounts."

$17b is a rounding error in a $1.6t system.

[Bakery Hill]

Originally Posted by BCC_1

$17b is a rounding error in a $1.6t system.

Its more the statistical impact of 3.2 million "lost" essentially nil value accounts when the total workforce is only about 11 million.

[BCC_1]

Originally Posted by Bakery Hill

Its more the statistical impact of 3.2 million "lost" essentially nil value accounts when the total workforce is only about 11 million.

It's 3.2m lost accounts not 3.2m people with lost accounts. But it's a fair observation.

Here's another survey using ABS data that measures the value of all adults' aggregated super balances ie if you have 10 accounts with $10k you will have $100k balance. The median they reach is even lower $6,000 (Table 4, page 8, I think they got male/female the wrong way around and I'm not sure why there's no median for over 65). Table 5 in the same doc shows aggregated balances with people who have no super removed from the data set. This gives a median of $27,600 but is not relevant to the Credit Suisse report as their methodology is to include all adults.

http://www.challenger.com.au/funds/T...have_Apr12.pdf