Industry super fund, Vision Super, has recovered over $5 million in lost super for its members in the quarter to September 2016. 

The fund found super for 236 members whose accounts were considered ‘lost’ by the Australian Taxation Office and another 85 members were able to consolidate multiple accounts over the same period.

One Vision Super member consolidated five lost super accounts totalling $102,695.49. 

There are a number of reasons superannuation accounts can be deemed “lost” by the ATO.

• A member can become separated from their super if a fund hasn’t been able to contact them, usually through moving house or changing jobs.
• An account can also be deemed lost if no contributions have been made for five years, if an employer hasn’t paid Super Guarantee payments into it for 12 months, or if the account balance is below $4000.

Vision Super CEO, Stephen Rowe, said the fund “proactively works to reunite members with their lost super.” 

“We work hard to reunite our members with their lost super because we know that people might not always get around to doing it themselves,” Stephen Rowe said.

“We don’t want our members to miss out on the benefits of finding lost super and consolidating multiple accounts.

“Furthermore, having super deemed lost means a member could risk losing the default insurance coverage that super comes with.

“There’s over $11 billion nationally sitting in lost super accounts, and we are very pleased to be able to reunite some of our members with theirs.

“We expect the next quarter results to be just as strong with improvements made to our website to make it even easier for members to activate a lost super request.”