Deven Billimoria's Blog

Investing can get complicated but the objective is pretty simple: “buy low” and “sell high”.  So why is it that so many people seem to do just the opposite?

SmartSalary is not licensed to give investment advice.  We do, however, process hundreds of millions of dollars of voluntary superannuation contributions every year, so we are able to see some clear trends.

And what we noticed was that as the stock market turned down in 2008/2009, people began stopping their voluntary super contributions. In fact, the lower the market went, the more people stopped contributing.

On one hand, this makes a lot of sense. Why keep putting your money into a fund that is losing money?  On the other hand, however, you can see that people were happy to buy when the market was at its highs but a lot less happy to buy when the market was much lower.  Thus instead of “buying low” and “selling high”, people were in effect doing just the opposite!

So what do you reckon?  What are your thoughts on this issue?  Which of the below categories best describes your thinking?

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So it’s been more than 10 years since we launched the SmartSalary brand, and we thought that it was about time that we gave it a refresh.  In fact, we thought we might get your thoughts before we officially released the new SmartSalary brand.

As you know, the current logo is black and purple with an S symbol in the front of it.

Going forward, we’ve elected to keep our name and our brand colour purple – the marketing whizzes say that there is way too much brand equity in the name and even the colour (whew!).

Here is the new logo they came up with:

So as you can see, in addition to the fancy new font, we’ve also added a new tagline, “saving money, made easy.”  And see that funny symbol at the top left corner . . . it’s intentionally a bit abstract and supposed to be a coin dropping into a piggy bank slot . . . so it ties into the “saving money, made easy” tagline – not bad, heh?

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So we’ve decided to open up our service centre for a half day on Saturdays and we’ve advertised it a bit with our clients.

We did it because we thought it would be a big hit. But guess what? Hardly anyone calls! So do you reckon we are really still a 9 to 5 country? Do we see weekends as a time to get away from anything that reminds us of work?

Is salary packaging the last thing we want to think about during the weekends? Or do you reckon that we are really a 24/7 nation and that our little weekend trial will slowly become a lot more popular? Let me know your thoughts.

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Dear WA Health Customers,

I thought you would like to hear from me in light of the recent events that led to the suspension of a number of WA Health employees. As you probably have heard or read in the papers, an investigation is currently underway in relation to potentially fraudulent salary packaging claims by a small number of employees within the WA public health system. Over the past few days the matter has been exacerbated by the amount of media coverage and public comment.

Before sharing with you what we know about the matter at hand, it is important for me to emphasize that the vast majority of our customers currently salary packaging the meal entertainment benefit are doing so within the law and guidelines set by SmartSalary in conjunction with WA Health.

At the moment there is lots of speculation of what will happen as a result of this investigation. Considering we have no information about what the future might bring, all I can do at this stage is tell you the four things that we do know.

First, SmartSalary’s Meal Entertainment product is compliant with Australian taxation law and is not a ‘rort’ or ‘scam’ as is being reported in some media outlets.  As long as our customers abide by the rules and do not seek to falsely inflate their claims the taxation savings available through this product are entirely legal.

Second, the WA Health investigation principally relates only to serious cases of deliberate misuse, such as duplication and fabrication of receipts.

Third, the potential fraud that is the subject of the current investigation was brought to the attention of WA Health by SmartSalary as a result of our quality checking and audit programs. As an administrator of salary packaging and as a supplier to WA Health, it is our duty to ensure that our customers follow the rules not only of the meal entertainment benefit but of all benefits available.

Fourth, and separate to the meal entertainment issue, there have been some comments in the press in relation to the media to another salary packaging company’s relationship with Brian Burke. SmartSalary has not, at any stage, had any involvement with Brian Burke in any capacity.

It is in all our interests to ensure that the meal entertainment concessions remain available to the public health sector and that those individuals who can access them do so honestly and legitimately.

I hope this information helps you better understand the current situation.

Warm regards,

Deven Billimoria

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