In a submission to the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA), ASFA policy director Fiona Galbraith outlined the industry body’s concerns about APRA’s proposed reporting form SRF 711.0: SuperStream Benchmarking Measures.
“While recognising the need for there to be measures to benchmark and evaluate SuperStream adoption and implementation and the consequences of this, ASFA has significant concerns about the extremely late advice of this proposed new reporting requirement with respect to rollover and contribution processing,” the submission stated.
“ASFA finds it inappropriate that the industry is only made aware of the proposed requirement two months from the date from which the data is to be collected, in a period when the industry is busy implementing a number of changes,” it continued.
The submission argues that the regulator should have begun consultation with the superannuation industry on any additional SuperStream reporting requirements at least 12 months ago, so as to put technological and back-office processes in place to assist with compliance.
Many funds will now face additional cost burdens, the submission contends, calling on APRA to extend the commencement date for the requirement until 1 July 2014 – 12 months after the implementation as it currently stands.
ASFA also took issue with the regularity of reporting measures under the requirement, stating that “the reporting frequency should either be quarterly or annual, but not both”.
In addition, the submission lists a number of terms covered in the reporting form that require further clarification, including “rollover”, “standard format”, and “straight through”.
