BT Financial Group
We provide superannuation and corporate law advice to BT Financial Group, including advising on legal issues in relation to SIS and licensing, member questions and claims, and trust deed interpretation for the Trustee of public offer funds offered by BT Financial Group. Our work involves quick turnaround times and emailed legal advice, based on instructions received directly from the client's business teams.
Member complaints, overseas transfers, powers of attorney, death and disablement claims, and disputes with insurers are some of the business-as-usual issues on which we have advised BT Financial Group.
Quentin Ayres
Advised a group of industry super funds including EISS, LGSS, SRF, SERF and AUSCOAL, which involved devising a range of structures to allow them to access private equity and illiquid investments. Ultimately, it let to the establishment of the Quentin Ayers Trusts, a managed scheme structure that allowed cost effective access to specialised investment classes by pooling some essential functions such as due diligence, asset management, reporting, while maintaining each of the individual
fund's abilities to satisfy their investment strategies.
ARIA
Acted for ARIA on its superannuation Risk Management Strategy and Risk Management Plan, to assist them to achieve a simple, streamlined risk management approach to interact effectively with existing compliance processes and reporting.
Comminsure & MLC
We have drafted group life and income protection insurance policies for various industry superannuation funds on behalf of issuers CommInsure and MLC. In some instances this has involved the preparation of insurance disclosure material for the fund PDS.
CBA Fund Trustee
We acted for a CBA fund trustee who changed its group life insurer, and was challenged for doing so, as the policy terms, including the TPD definition, were different under the new policy.
Henry Davis York collected and presented evidence on TPD policy definitions available in the market at the time. We were also successful in achieving an interpretation of section 52 of SIS favourable to the trustee.
Corporate governance and board of directors issues
The Cooper review has largely focused on super fund governance and board procedures making it imperative for industry super funds, with a board of employee and employer association members and independents, to stay on top of the current issued and to 'walk-the-talk' on good governance.
We have advised various subsidiary boards of ING Australia on the regular reporting they each receive from their businesses. The project was extensive, first involving training of directors of companies which issue superannuation and managed funds products, and life and general insurance products, as well as encompassing disclosure and distribution aspects.
Our role was to review papers received by the boards, to assess their usefulness in meeting the needs of directors, and we developed 'template' board reports, and supporting policies and then scoped them into Investment Management Agreements
Employment contract and human resources issues
We have drafted and negotiated employment contracts, conducted workplace investigations into discrimination and bullying complaints, advised on award and agreement interpretation issues, unfair dismissal claims, and on changes to workplace policies and how they may affect employee entitlements, including super.