Super fund signs with SuperStream rollover gateway

Challenger has signed on to Westpac Institutional Bank's QuickSuper, a SuperStream rollover gateway. 

It said its Challenger Retirement Fund was the first super fund in Australia to make a gateway arrangement to comply with SuperStream reforms. 

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 utilising a rollover gateway would cut down time between fund transfers and keep members' funds fully invested for longer. 

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"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.

Switching from manual processing to electronic processing is expected to reduce the cost of processing transactions from between $5-10 to between 5-15 cents, according to Treasury, which 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. 

While there was no requirement to work through a gateway, according to the Australian Taxation Office (ATO), 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 decision to procure a gateway arrangement rested with the fund trustee and was subject to existing outsourcing arrangements under the SIS Act, it 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.