The tax office is currently in the fifth week of an ‘induction process’ with early SuperStream adopters.
Speaking to InvestorDaily, ATO national program manager for data standards and e-commerce Philip Hind said the first successful employer to use the new APRA standard was Hansen Technologies.
Hansen, along with its clearing house QuickSuper, its gateways, its related APRA funds (VisionSuper, AMP, IOOF, CBUS, HESTA and REST) and administrators (AAS and Superpartners), completed the first SuperStream contribution in the second week of August.
“It showed the end-to-end distribution network from an employer via the clearing house and gateways all the way through to both APRA funds and SMSFs,” said Mr Hind.
The ATO tracks all of the SuperStream contributions from sender to receiver as part of the induction process, he said – with all money and data reconciled for APRA funds.
“We don’t actually do a formal reconciliation at the SMSF end because there are too many individual trustees. But we know that the money got through,” said Mr Hind.
The SuperStream messaging and the electronic payments associated with it “literally takes place in under 24 hours”, he said.
“It’s a sub-day transaction for both the data, money and reconciliation in a best practice situation,” said Mr Hind.
By comparison, the current contribution process can take as long as nine days, he said.
Traditionally the process has been restrained by manual data entry as well as the slowness of the money transaction, said Mr Hind – but that is set to end as banks move to the same-day settlement of funds.
“The employer can send the money and have it received and in a member’s account within 24 to 48 hours,” he said.
The ATO has established 20 induction groups, of which three have completed one SuperStream contribution cycle and another three are ‘in progress’.
“We’re gradually going to build this process through into September and October,” said Mr Hind. “By the first week of November, most APRA funds are expected to be ready to receive, so you’ll have a larger number of receivers gradually coming on-stream.”
APRA funds have until 3 November to alert the regulator if they need to request a later start date, which can be no later than 30 June 2015, he added.
“We would expect that there would be a small number of funds that for part of their products/platforms they might not be ready,” said Mr Hind.
“They need to report to us by the end of September on their readiness, and we’ll [be] publishing those details.”
