Section 113(18) of the Supreme Court Act 1986 allows the Senior Master to pay from the Common Funds’ Guarantee and Reserve Account [G&R] the administration expenses of the Office.  G&R is also intended to serve as a prudential safeguard for the investments of the Common Funds.

G&R is applied to meet all administration expenses, including the salaries and on-costs of all staff employed in the Office.  During the 2022-23 financial year, those expenses totalled approximately $13.60 million.  The interest which G&R produced met approximately some of this cost.  The bulk of the balance was made up by fixing rates of interest in respect of  Common Fund No. 2, pursuant to sections 113(14) and (15) of the Act, which are slightly less than the income actually produced by the investments of the Common Fund.

For detailed information see: Cost Recovery

Administration Expense Ratio (AER)

The FIC AER for the 2022-23 financial year is 0.64%.

For an explanation of the AER see: Cost Recovery

How does FIC’s AER measure against similar organisations?

The AERs of FIC and other trustee organisations for the 2022-23 financial year are shown below.

Bar graph of Administration Expense Ratio. Funds in Court 0.64%, the lowest. State Trustees 2.59%. NSW Trustee and Guardian 1.24%. Public Trustee ACT 1.97%. Public Trustee WA 3.45%. The Public Trustee QLD 4.01%.

The AER is the total expenditure excluding depreciation for the financial year divided by the total assets under management and trusteeship and the end of the financial year.

The information used to complete the above graph was extracted from each organisation’s 2023 Annual report, except for Public Trustee WA which was extracted from their 2022 Annual report:

  • State Trustees Limited pages 42 and 83
  • NSW Trustee & Guardian pages 44 and 87
  • Public Trustee ACT pages 44 and 112
  • Public Trustee WA pages 15 and 22
  • The Public Trustee QLD pages 76 and 5.