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Comment by sbennettmcleish | Hacker News Reader

These "company managed" pension schemes have always fascinated me and would seem ripe for corruption / raiding by the company if they're short a few $$$.

Seems like in Australia we're in a pretty good position with "superannuation" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superannuation_in_Australia being compulsory since 1992 and is typically managed by completely unrelated parties to your employer.

The payments are generally made directly by your employer into the fund of your own choosing.

The biggest thing is once you've had this contributed to YOUR account, it is YOURS (drawable from age 65) and doesn't matter what happens to the fortunes of your employer(s) in the future.

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My dads pension plan was raided in exactly that manner. Thankfully, his union took care of it for them, hiring a shark of a lawyer who got it refunded by fining the hell out of the executives and the company for their illegal actions.

Of course, he also inherited thousands of acres of land, so he’s not exactly in a bad place had it not been funded again.

Replace corporation with government and you see the same behavior at city/county/state/national levels.

That's why independently run 401(k)'s are the best. I'm a trustee of the one for our company, and there's no way I could raid it.

But its an awful DC scheme you cant put much in there is zero tax relief an employer Mach is tiny the UK from April mandates 5% match for an employer -better than nothing I supose

Lots of people "raid" it by going to cash in the down-turns in the market and buying in the hyped peaks losing over 50% in the cycle.

I think your usage of "raid" is not what is being discussed here. The meaning here is when companies get in trouble, they use loopholes (or downright evil language) in their retirement plans to essentially take the money from employees.

In the UK due to some scandals in the past (Robert Maxwell) the pension schemes I know about have independent trustees nominated or elected by employer and employees who have to follow a legal scheme of arrangement and are also audited.

The problem with a lot of pension fun is the accountancy industry have set unrealistic rules for how you define the liability this handing the employer an excuse to close the schemes - I have had an off the record briefing for one scheme this was over a change from RPI to CPI.

At this meeting a trustee commented the worst case scenario that you have to allow for was one where the economy had effectively collapsed and making sure that you had a stockpile of canned good and shotgun shells would be more important that receiving a pension check :-)

I have a good friend in Australia whose employer stole at least $10K from his superannutation - apparently without any comebacks.

The ATO enforces superannuation payment by employers and they can do so pretty effectively - your friend should try going to them https://www.ato.gov.au/Individuals/Super/Unpaid-super-from-y...

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