Australians still reluctant super savers - report

The majority of Australians remain reluctant to invest additional funds into superannuation, according to a new report on the state of savings for retirement.

The report, published this week, said that despite superannuation representing an important option for long-term saving, there was an obvious reluctance among survey respondents to increase superannuation investment.

The importance of the survey finding is that it coincides with recent Federal Government data suggesting that the introduction of the co-contribution regime had fostered an improvement in the level of personal superannuation contributions.

The survey, compiled by ING in conjunction with the Melbourne Institute, said that in the March quarter, only 8.5 per cent of households said they would be happy to put more money into superannuation with the most popular reasons for hesitating to invest further in super including a preference for spending money, a desire to pay off debt and a belief that superannuation returns were inadequate.

However the survey analysis said that, overall, there was no one clear reason for the reluctance of Australian households to invest further in superannuation.

This probably explains the survey’s other finding that the vast majority of respondents had only employer-sponsored superannuation, with only 6.8 per cent indicating some other form of involvement.