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Widow Karen Redhead demands action after Cbus Super’s 10-month payout delay

When Jamie Bell died of a rare neurological cancer in 2022, Cbus Super forced his devastated widow Karen Redhead to wait 10 excruciating months before paying out his life insurance and superannuation.

Cbus victim Karen Redhead on Wednesday; top right with late husband Jamie Bell, who died of cancer, and daughters Sophie, Abbie and Zoe in 2016. Picture: Ross Swanborough
Cbus victim Karen Redhead on Wednesday; top right with late husband Jamie Bell, who died of cancer, and daughters Sophie, Abbie and Zoe in 2016. Picture: Ross Swanborough

When Jamie Bell died of a rare neurological cancer in 2022, Cbus Super forced his devastated widow Karen Redhead to wait 10 excruciating months before paying out his life insurance and superannuation.

As she and the couple’s three young daughters mourned the loss of the sports-mad 52-year-old, Ms Redhead’s grief was compounded by financial stress: how would she pay the bills while Cbus continued to delay paying the several hundred thousand dollars she was owed?

Thursday is the two-year anniversary of Mr Bell’s death, and Ms Redhead wants the company’s leaders, such as the chairman, former treasurer and ALP federal president Wayne Swan to be held accountable for any wrongdoing uncovered by corporate watchdog ASIC, to deliver some justice for the 10,000 grieving families left in limbo by the Cbus failings.

“It did feel to me like they were purposely delaying things … making it excessively difficult,” Ms Redhead told The Australian from her home in Perth.

“There’s a whole lot of admin when someone dies that you don’t realise. This was something I didn’t think would be as hard, and having extra things to deal with at that time was really difficult. He (Swan) needs to find out where it’s going wrong.

“I didn’t feel like the individual people I spoke to were the problem. It felt like a system issue.”

Karen Redhead, who lost her husband Jamie Bell to a rare cancer and struggled to have Cbus pay out his superannuation, at home in Perth. Picture: Ross Swanborough
Karen Redhead, who lost her husband Jamie Bell to a rare cancer and struggled to have Cbus pay out his superannuation, at home in Perth. Picture: Ross Swanborough

The Cbus revelations prompted the Northern Territory’s first chief minister, lawyer Paul Everingham, to slam the superannuation system in which such payout delays were “endemic”.

“The superannuation industry is massive, and to lawyers like me who have to deal with it regularly, it is shambolic,” he wrote to The Australian.

“I can instance cases where the funds were paid to the wrong person and had (to) be clawed back by litigation. One particularly distressing case was a woman who had to throw herself on charity for 12 months while we struggled with a huge union-backed fund to get the money she should have had in a fortnight or so after her husband’s death.”

Ms Redhead believes the federal government should change the rules to require death benefits to be paid out in four months for simple cases, and six months for more complicated matters. Companies that flout the deadlines should be hit with fines.

Ms Redhead said that before her husband’s diagnosis in 2019, he would regularly cycle 200km a week, and spend time with their daughters, teaching them to ride their bikes or playing in the pool, while she continued her PhD research.

But an aggressive tumour – Diffuse Midline Glioma – fused to his spinal cord and left him wheelchair bound.

For Mr Bell, sporty pursuits with daughters Abbie, Zoe and Sophie turned into movie nights, netball coaching from the sidelines, and wheelchair rides around the streets of northern Perth, all while undergoing chemotherapy and radiation.

In the weeks after his death, Ms Redhead bundled up all the necessary paperwork and sent it to Cbus via tracked post. “I could see that it arrived (but) they lost everything,” she said.

The next time, she hand-delivered the documents and was told the process should take two to three months. It should have been straightforward.

Mr Bell had only been married once, to Ms Redhead, and she was the mother of his three children, the executor of his will, and the superannuation account beneficiary.

But, again, nothing happened. There was always an excuse, another missing bill, a rogue document.

“I even got told at one point that my case was complicated,” she said. “But it wasn’t complicated; there wasn’t anyone else it (the death benefits) could have gone to.

“Every time I spoke to them, it was the same, and nothing seemed to be happening.”

After 10 months of no answers from Cbus, the company paid the outstanding lump sum in September 2023, just days after Ms Redhead reluctantly gave a radio interview about her ordeal.

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Original URL: https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/widow-karen-redhead-demands-action-after-cbus-supers-10month-payout-delay/news-story/4ea9cea50433138bd3f310ddd95b008e