stateplus.com.au

I called circa 21 April to discuss my options on a super matter.
I was booked with one advisor named [name removed] from Gymea office for 5 May with email confirming the same.
Two days later I received an email changing the appt to 28 April with [name removed] from the Wollongong office. No call if I preferred that.
A day later I received a call asking if I wanted an appointment have an advisor that day from the Chatswood. Hell I hadn't even completed the financial report. I explained the 3 different appointments and told them to stop changing crap around and to actually check if I had an appointment. Besides what actually happened to my prior appointments? Oh [name removed] isn't available now. Look just keep it for 5 May.
Later that night, a lady from the Wollongong office called to offer me an appointment. WHAT THE HELL !!!
What kind of crappy show are you all running there. 4 different appointments 3 different offices.
I will wait for them to call again and then I will state you've lost me !!

My wife and I have been with State Superannuation/State Plus in Canberra for nearly 12 years since 2005. Over this time and due to a high turnover of staff, we have been bounced from one Financial Planner to another, which has not allowed for consistency in advice on our investments, especially during the period of the GFC. When we have been able to finally find professional and committed Financial Planners that understand our needs, they ended up leaving the Canberra Office due to apparent management issues.

After only 18 months ago finally deciding to move our accounts to the well managed and high performing Woden Office of State Plus (where we finally found an excellent and professional Financial Planner), the Canberra Regional Manager without any consultation with clients, in December wrote to us advising us of ce us of the closure of the Woden Office and telling us we must again use the most inconvenient Canberra Office we had only recently left.

As a consequence of the Woden Office closure in December, most of the staff from that office have since left State Plus, including once again our Financial Planner of only 18 months, causing us a great deal of inconvenience, anger and stress.

Due to my past concerns falling on deaf ears, it appears State Plus HQ don't care about the problems in Canberra and the impact they have on their staff and in particular the Canberra regional clients. If it wasn't for the excellent service of few a individual and now departed Financial Planners, and our late stage in life, we would have left the company long ago. We are now seriously considering that option.

Still in my email inbox sits the email of 10 September 2018 stating that I should disregard all previous mentions of my 2017-18 annual statement and that it would be ready shortly. Nothing has happened. Every two weeks I ring the 1800 number to a call centre which seems to be fielding queries from all sorts of funds, each time to be told it will be ready shortly. Anyone joining this fund nowadays must be nuts!!! Warn your heirs and successors, fellow retirees. It was good as State Super Financial Services, seems shonkier by the week ever since as we are merged and acquired and are told the new logo/service/location/login/website are all "exciting".

My Spouse opened an Allocated Pension Fund on his retirement in 2012 and nominated me as his Reversionary Beneficiary. While he was alive we were quite satisfied with the fund. I expected that the transfer would be automatic but since his death in July 2019 I have been treated with contempt by this Company. Firstly they told me that there was no Nomination on the Fund although they had been listing me on the Centrelink Statement each year. When I challenged this they ignored me until I hired a Solicitor to write to them. They only responded to her after two more requests for response. Having finally admitted I was the rightful beneficiary they gave a phone number for me to ring and set up an appointment to complete the transfer. I was told they were "very busy"and it would be some time before I could get an appointment but the Manager would call me back the next day. No call has eventuated. I would not recommend them to anyone.

Been with the fund for 50 years! They refuse to acknowledge I was charged fees for no service and all they are concerned about is avoiding any responsibility and compensation (the critical point I have continued to impress upon them is that I was never told I was being charged for the services I continually declined). They have absolutely no reciprocal loyalty for their clients and do not address personal issues. I would be interested to know how many of the 40000 odd clients they are assessing get compensation and what their circumstances were. Very interesting too that there is currently a barrage of positive advertisements on facebook - have never seen such advertising by stateplus since the brc. I suggest this is in response to mistrust and disloyalty they have to their clients! Would be more beneficial to publish the results of the review they are conducting. Not one bit happy with a fund I have been with for so long and have a substantial account with. I am planning a move to another fund with cheaper fees and better growth results. They couldn't give a damn regarding my intentions!

I have recently been reading the on line State Plus reviews and have been shocked by the negative tone of some reviewers as this is totally at odds with my own experience.

I have been a client of State Plus at Gosford for a long time and for the last few years my advisor has been Bradley. He has done a wonderful job in guiding me through retirement at aged 60 then returning to work part time and his financial advice has proven to be very sound.

I have a Flexible Income Plan with State Plus. I draw out 4% each month as a pension payment and I have also made several one off lump sum withdrawals for home renovations etc. from the account and my balance has stayed pretty healthy. I could not be happier!

My account was originally being debited a small amount each month for financial advice and I was meeting up fairly regularly with Bradley after my retirement but as everything was running so smoothly, I decided to forgo the one on one meetings with Bradley to save on fees. As a result my account is no longer being debited for financial planning fees. I can still make an appointment to see Bradley if the need so arises in the future and I would be charged a one off fee for this at the time.

My advice to anyone reading the reviews is to bear in mind that lots of clients with positive reviews of State Plus may not post them on line.

I had an allocated pension with StatePlus for 10 years. I'm sorry I didn't do more research on the performance of super-funds before I joined, but I was sort of hurried into it by a previous employer when I resigned from full-time work. The Royal Commission last year into financial services got me motivated. I discovered this fund does not perform wonderfully, probably in an average range and its investment fees are higher than many other funds.
I have now switched to another industry fund that has better performance (and I did look at this over 5 years etc.)
Also, I was surprised at how good and strategic the financial advice was from my new fund, which is only going to charge for advice if I want it (so no annual fee for advice like StatePlus if I don't need to use it in any year).
StatePlus was OK with advice in telling me where my investments were at. But not strategic in terms of the best options to manage my super and budget. My new fund placed much greater emphasis on advice within my longer-term expenditure needs/goals. I now think this form of advice is essential, not just tracking where your investments are at each year.

I have ben drawing an allocated pension from SSFS/Stateplus since 2007. Since the change I find that the returns are poorer and the fees are fairly high. 1.4% on their balanced fund. Higher returns mask high fees and perhaps justify the fees if the higher returns can be maintained.

Looking at my situation I draw an allocated pension of about $1900/month and on my balance of about $440000 attract fees in the order $6000/ annum or $513/month. Therefore it is costing me $500/month to pay me $1900/month with my own money. Good value for money? I think not.

As I am drawing a part CSS pension I am effected by the Jan 2015 changes on how Super balances are treated for assessment to the aged pension. If you were receiving an allocated pension prior to the 1 Jan 2015 deadline
your balance was grandfathered and the previous conditions prevailed for assessment regarding the aged pension. However if you wanted to change your Super fund and changed providers the post Jan 1 2015 regime would apply to your roll over balance regarding the calculation of the part aged pension This has the effect of trapping you in your fund otherwise you will be assessed under the new ruleswhich in my case meant losing most of the part aged pension. This of course is not the fault of Stateplus but I cannot remember my financial adviser warning me of the implications of these changes which should have been part of their duty to put the financial interests of the client first. Clearly this did not happen in this case

I was a commonwealth employee for 34 years under the comsuper scheme. State super financial services, now State plus are contracted to look after the financial advice etc for comsuper.

Now as a private super fund things are a bit different. I have never kept a financial advisor for more than one appointment, they just disappear and I have found out at a much later date. I really cant keep up it it really annoys me.

Personally I kept asking myself, are they trying to steer me in a direction that maximises their profit and not mine? Never convinced my self either way but I always feel uneasy about how advice is tilted.

The advice I got was ok but I did a lot of research and virtually had to argue what I wanted/needed, this is not the way to do business.

I think I can do better so it will be bon voyage to them soon

This is a company that has compensated its clients to the tune of close to $100 million for charging clients an ongoing advice fee of 0.75% that many clients are not even aware that they are paying a fee for.

Advisors are also remunerated based on how much money they bring in to the firm by way of recommending contributions to a StatePlus super fund.

Bunch of thieves. Stay away.

Been with this mob for 13 years and had a change of financial advisor. The new advisor disclosed my options and fee structure. Immediately realised I had been kept in the dark and been manipluated to benifit the previous advisor. The product had changed 5 years ago and could have been unbundled but this option was not disclosed until there was a change of advisor. Effectively this meant paying for fees that I did not value nor need resulting in a significant loss. After complaining and getting nowhere have escalated to the STC and am awaiting outcome.

We have been with State Super for many years mainly with one adviser. It worked very well for us until just before the global crisis. Because advisers are given a bonus to keep you in the less secure growth funds, our adviser became aggressive regarding our desire to take a safer course. Since the name change to State Plus service and even before, we had a succession of different, less personal advisers.

We decided to transfer our funds and that is when we really became concerned. We had advice in Nov the funds had been transferred. Two weeks later "the cheque's in the post" we were told. More than three weeks later after emails, phone calls and finally a threat to go to the financial ombudsman, a manager organised the transfer within 24 hours. As it was a considerable sum, and we had missed out on earnings for nearly a month, we asked for compensation. A resolution was promised within 45 days. After more emails we agreed to an offer however that has not eventuated so we are taking our complaint to the financial ombudsman.

We searched online and found that this business has an active Facebook page with 207 followers. From our experience this can indicate that the business is either not actively engaged with online communication or is new and growing. We have discovered that this business has SSL (secure sockets layer), which means that this business handles your data, such as personal information or credit card details, with secure connection. We discovered that the domain for this business is relitevely new, which means that it could be a start-up business that does not yet have a huge amount of customers.