More people are accessing their super to pay for stomach surgery to control their weight as awareness grows that retirement savings can be used to pay for medical treatments.
Getting access to some of her super allowed Serah Kidcaff, 31, to be able to afford to have gastric banding two months ago and already she's lost 15 kilograms.
Before surgery, Kidcaff was morbidly obese with the problem running in her family. It was after her mother recently had two minor heart attacks in quick succession that Serah decided to act after putting it off.
Kidcaff, who lives in Mackay in North Queensland and works in recruitment, says if she had to pay for the surgery she would have had to save for a long time.
Her doctors had told her that she had a high risk of diabetes and heart disease.
"I become quite desperate to get it fixed," Kidcaff says. "I did not have that kind of money." Her clinic suggested she apply to release her super.
She withdrew $9000 from her super - $6000 for the surgery and the rest to pay for travel and accommodation costs in Brisbane.
"I've never felt better both physically and mentally," she says. "I have a totally new outlook on life."
Over the past two financial years the number of applications for release of super has increased 50 per cent to 29,000.
Figures from the Department of Human Services (DHS), which approves applications for early release of super on compassionate grounds, shows for the year ending June 30, 2016, $205 million was released compared with $145 million just three years earlier.
Normally, super savings cannot be accessed until reaching preservation age, which is anywhere between age 56 and 60 depending on your date of birth.
Applications for early access on compassionate grounds are made to DHS. They are assessed using strict criteria and, if approved, DHS notifies the fund to release the money.
Early release for medical treatments are only allowed where these include the treatment of a life-threatening illness or injury or alleviating acute or chronic pain or mental disturbance.
During last financial year, almost half of the applications were rejected by DHS.
There is no publicly available breakdown of how the money is being used, but it is believed that among the money released for medical treatments, bariatric surgery is the dominant category.
SuperCare, which helps people like to access their super and helped Kidcaff, says it has helped people access about $17 million of super over past year; about double what SuperCare facilitated on opening its doors four years ago.
Maria Gutierrez, SuperCare general manager, says 60 per cent of the $17 million has been used to pay for bariatric surgery and follow-up surgery, where those with obesity that is life threatening and given a "gastric band" or have part of their stomach removed.
Rising obesity
The data on early release of super comes as the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons (RACS) issues a warning about the weight problem.
According to projections, by 2025, more than one in four Australian children aged between five and 17 will be overweight or obese.
This is up from one in five at the turn of the century, with a clear trajectory towards a one in three figure.
George Hopkins, RACS Fellow and President of Obesity Surgery Society of Australia and New Zealand, says the increase in Australia and New Zealand had reached crisis point.
"We often refer to the obesity epidemic as a ticking time bomb waiting to go off, but the reality is it already has.
"You don't have to spend long in any public shopping centre to work out how widespread it has become," Hopkins said.
There are strong links between obesity and many other health problems, including type 2 diabetes, heart disease and certain types of cancers, Hopkins says.
And obese people have a 50-100 per cent increased risk of dying prematurely compared to people of normal weight, he says.
SuperCare's Maria Gutierrez says for many low-income people, accessing super has allowed them to afford life-saving surgery for morbid obesity after all other treatments have failed.
They are people who have already used their credit cards and some have refinanced their mortgages and have no other options, she says.
Those are are able to get a loan for the surgery are reluctant as interest rates on unsecured credit is very high, Gutierrez says.
IVF game changer
Early release of super for IVF cycles is a smaller part of SuperCare's business compared with batriactic surgery, but is a growing part of its business.
Approval for release requires a psychiatrist report showing IVF is needed to alleviate an acute or chronic mental disturbance.
As the odds of successful IVF diminishes with age, couples are under time pressure to start IVF, which for healthy couple under the age 35 takes an average of three cycles for a live birth, Gutierrez says.
There were almost 68,000 IVF cycles in 2014 only 23.3 per cent resulted in clinical pregnancy and fewer than one-in-five or 19 per cent in a live delivery.
Each cycle costs between $10,000 and $12,000 and Medicare will pick up about half the cost, Gutierrez says.
Standard private health policies will cover some of the medications needed but couples are typically left with a shortfall of $5000 or $6000 per cycle.
In what could prove a game changer for those seeking IVF, Primary IVF clinics have opened recently in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane that bulk bill for IVF treatment, at least for straightforward treatments.
Lower income
Gutierrez says most of the money being released through SuperCare is from industry super funds; the not-for-profit funds whose members can include a high proportion of lower-income workers.
Applicants are screened by SuperCare, which then prepares the applications ensuring a very high rate of success.
SuperCare charges $680 for applications for early release for bariatric surgery and $980 for IVF treatment. The fee is refunded if the application fails.
David Haynes, executive manager of policy and research at the Australian Institute of Superannuation Trustees, which represents not-for-profit super funds, supports the early release of super for legitimate reasons.
"But, if these growth rates continue, early access will run the risk of becoming industrial scale," Haynes says.
It reduces the money that individuals have for their retirements, with those accessing their super early losing the power of compound interest.
Haynes says a dollar in super at age 30 ends-up worth much more at retirement than a dollar put into super at age 50.
Gutierrez says that many morbidly obese people are not likely to reach the age of 65.
Those who become unemployed, for example, and have no way of paying their bills, should apply directly to their super fund under financial hardship provisions for early release.
