More than 1 million Aussies dipping into early release super twice

Around 1 million Australians have applied to access their superannuation in both the 2019/20 and 2020/21 financial years.

According to new figures from the Australia Prudential and Regulatory Authority (APRA), it also shows that Australians who are access their second round of super, also are taking more money out.

The government saw around 2.9 million applications received from the first round of early access to super, with Australians withdrawing around $7,407.

But what APRA found, was that repeat applicants were taking out on average, $8,619 – a $1,212 jump.

“Over the week to 19 July, 219,000 applications were received by funds of which 56,000 were initial applications and 163,000 were repeat applications. This brought the total number of initial applications to 2.9 million and repeat applications to 1.0 million since the inception of the scheme,” said APRA in a statement.

“Over the week to 19 July, superannuation funds made payments to 349,000 members, bringing the total number of payments by funds to their members to approximately 3.6 million since inception. The total value of payments during the week was $2.7 billion, with $28.0 billion paid since inception. The average payment made over the period since inception is $7,719 overall and $8,619 when considering repeat applications only.”

The APRA statistics also showed the 10 funds with the highest number of applications received from the ATPO have made 2.4 million payments worth a total of $18.3 billion.

According to an ABC report, AustralianSuper, has paid out the most – more than $2.4 billion.

Sunsuper, REST, HOSTPLUS and CBUS have also all seen withdrawals of more than $1 billion so far.

BT, MLC, OnePath and Colonial have seen the biggest withdrawals among the private sector funds, although none had more than $1 billion in withdrawals.