Semi-Portability’s 8 Rules for Intermediaries — Unlicensed Selling a Crime

This article is a rewrite of a report from October 2012.

Semi-portability — the Employee Choice Arrangement — launched in November 2012. To protect 2.35 million workers, the MPFA rolled out eight measures tightening intermediary sales, including a registration regime and a conduct code. Selling unregistered, or breaching the code, risked criminal prosecution, deregistration or fines.

What were the eight measures?

Named cards, no inducements, full disclosure. The MPFA’s conduct guidelines required intermediaries to show name cards bearing their registration number and name, so clients could verify identity on the MPFA website; banned rebates, vouchers and gifts as inducements (fee discounts allowed); and required disclosure of fee details, commissions and how pay varied across plans pitched.

What was the MPFA’s advice before switching?

It is long-term money — don’t switch for switching’s sake. An MPFA executive director stressed MPF is a long-term investment, not to be moved on short-term market noise. Transfers took 6–8 weeks with an investment gap, risking “sell low, buy high”.

What is the lesson from 2012?

Choice arrived — and so did the con artists. When semi-portability opened up choice in 2012, the MPFA’s first thought was not celebration but fraud prevention: licensed selling, inducement bans — all to stop a “switching wave” becoming a “scam wave”. Members’ rule one: check the licence before listening to the pitch.