SMSF advisers and administrators can help trustees meet the three-day SuperStream rollover deadline by engaging in proactive education around the process when the topic of a rollover is first raised, according to an administrator.
Heffron client relationship manager Sean Johnston said the three-day window to complete a rollover starts as soon as a superannuation fund is provided with all the information to commence the rollover, but does not account for any time to get an accurate balance or liquidate assets if required.
“Once you have the four pieces of information required – the name of the receiving fund, its Australian business number (ABN), electronic service address (ESA) and the member number – and it’s a legitimate request, that is when the three-day window opens,” Johnston told selfmanagedsuper.
“What we are doing is creating proactive education around the questions a SuperStream rollover can raise and asking if the fund is able to do that rollover, that is, does it have liquidity or would it have to sell assets. Is there enough cash or do they plan to make an in-specie rollover, which would place it outside SuperStream?
He said Heffron had been working on templates for use with trustees and advisers to address common issues with SuperStream, including meeting the three-day window, based on the problems it had seen since the commencement of the SuperStream system.
“So far, the common issues we are addressing are around liquidity, up-to-date bank details and member information, including any changes to names, and the inclusion of the ESA, ABN, tax file number and complying status of a fund, and the size of a transfer, which can also create problems,” he said.
“We are trying to get a client in the ballpark when it comes to a rollover and at the front end telling them we need time to process the data before this three-day window and some things have to be done first.”
He said the process has made the rollover process easier and it was likely to improve further once trustees and advisers were more familiar with the requirements of SuperStream.
“Looking at my clients on a day-to-day basis, it does feels like we have seen a decline in cases with issues and starting to eliminate instances where people do not make a correct transfer. We are still working on the three-day window, but are certainly lessening some of those errors that make it go beyond that time,” he said.
