Your Cbus Super Income Stream payments are paid into your nominated bank account. Your nominated account must be held either in your name or, if the nominated bank account is held jointly, you need to be one of the account holders. Cbus Super Income Stream payments cannot be paid to you by cheque.

How often are payments made? 

You can opt to have your payments paid fortnightly, monthly, quarterly, half yearly or yearly. For payment frequencies other than fortnightly, you can nominate to receive payments on the 15th day, or the last day, of the month. You even choose which investment options your payment is deducted from.

What are my drawdown options?

You can choose for your income stream payments to be drawn from your account in the following ways:

• 1. Proportional: you can nominate a proportion of the payment to be drawn from each option. For example, 10% from Moderate Growth and 90% from the Cash Option.
• 2. Priority: you can nominate a priority order for each investment option to be drawn down. For example, if you nominated the Cash Option as priority 1, this option would be drawn down until it has a nil balance before moving on to priority 2.
• 3. Pro-rata: if you nominate the pro-rata option, your payments would be drawn in equal proportion across the investment options you're invested in.
• 4. Highest balance first: this option will draw your income stream payments from the investment option with the highest balance.

Calculating your minimum payments

The Federal Government has set a minimum limit on the income that must be paid to you each year from your Super Income Stream. The limit is simply equal to a percentage of your account balance at the beginning of each financial year. Recognising the effect of the economic downturn on income stream earnings, the govenment has reduced the minimum payment amount by 50% until 30 June 2010. The percentage is linked to your age at the beginning of that financial year, as follows:

Provided your income stream is not operating under the 'Transition to Retirement' facility, this is the only restriction on the amount of income you can draw from your Super Income Stream (subject to the available balance).

Note: If you access a Cbus Super Income Stream under the 'Transition to Retirement' facility you will be subject to a maximum annual payment amount equal to 10% of your account balance.