Assets Value of Managed Investments

Types of managed investments

Managed investments include:

• public unit trusts (including property, equity, bond, cash management and mortgage trusts, and common funds) offered by unit trust managers,
• insurance bonds (including investment bonds, savings plans, insurance certificates and single premium insurance policies) offered by insurance companies,
• friendly society bonds,
• superannuation fund investments (including public superannuation funds, approved deposit funds, retirement savings accounts and self managed superannuation funds) offered by a range of institutions,
• certain asset-tested lifetime income streams,
• non-exempt funeral bonds.

Assets value 

The assets value of a managed investment is the current market value.

Managed investments can be unit based or account based.

Note: The deeming provisions under the income test applies to managed investments.    

Unit-based managed investments

Unit buy-back prices are obtained each month for unit based managed investments from fund managers and stored on the DVA Managed Investment Database. Unit buy-back prices are updated in the middle of each month and reflect the last sale price for the last working day of the preceding calendar month. They are only applied to assessments:

• at automatic bulk updates of pension statutory increases in March and September each year for all persons holding unit based managed investments, or     
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  Chapter 9.7 Statutory Increases

   

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• when a person asks for a re-assessment, or
• when a change is notified for any managed investment or public company share.

Account-based managed investments

The value of account based managed investments is only updated when the person notifies of a change in the value or the Department undertakes a revaluation. Pensioners are required to advise DVA if the value of their account based investments varies by more than $1,000.

Lifetime income streams

Asset-tested lifetime income streams purchased on or after 1 July 2019 which were purchased with non-superannuation monies, are considered managed investments before the assessment day (prior to payments commencing or the owner reaching pension age).  The value is the purchase amount.  If more than one amount has been paid, the purchase amount is the sum of those amounts, compounded using the ‘above threshold deeming rate’, less commuted amounts. More – see “Purchase Amount” in the Glossary.

After the assessment day, it is no longer considered a managed investment and other rules apply, see 10.5.4 Means Test Assessment of Lifetime Income Streams.

Non-exempt funeral bonds

If a funeral bond does not meet the requirements to be an exempt asset, then the whole funeral bond is counted as an asset at its current value. Non-exempt funeral bonds are assessed as account-based managed investments.