Challenger signs on to SuperStream rollover gateway
Challenger has signed on to Westpac Institutional Bank's QuickSuper, a SuperStream rollover gateway.
Its Challenger Retirement Fund is the first super fund in Australia to make a gateway arrangement to comply with SuperStream reforms, it said.
The move comes five months ahead of the Government's 1 July deadline for super fund trustees to adopt new data and e-commerce standards before a six-month transition period begins.
Challenger general manager operations David Mackaway said it would cut down time between fund transfers and allow members' funds to be fully invested for longer.
"In addition to facilitating member choice and helping consolidate multiple super accounts, the move to electronic transfers from paper-based processing will be simpler, faster and more efficient," he said.
SuperStream implementation is expected to reduce the cost of manually processing transactions from between $5-10 to between 5-15 cents, according to Treasury. It said the superannuation industry processes more than 100 million transactions annually.
"Not only will auto-processing save time, it will improve transparency through payment tracking, payment auditing, access to clients' online transaction history and customer support," Mackaway said.
The Australian Taxation Office (ATO) said there was no government requirement to procure a gateway service, and the decision rested with the fund trustee. Gateway arrangements were subject to existing outsourcing arrangements under the SIS Act, it said.
While there was no requirement to work through a gateway, trustees needed to justify the costs and inconvenience of managing service requirements internally, and the complexity of managing e-commerce exchanges with thousands of potential service end-points, the ATO said.
Last October, the Minister for Financial Services and Superannuation, Bill Shorten, said the industry had estimated SuperStream savings would reach $1 billion per annum.
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