Bravura Solutions Limited, who have recently launch their own SuperStream compliant product, Babel, believe that the reforms are necessary, however, the July 1 deadline has been difficult to comply with.
“I think the industry as a whole recognises the reform as required and necessary,” Jason Tong, chief operating officer of Bravura Solutions told InvestorDaily. However, he added it would be “safe to say that they have been finding some of the deadlines quite challenging”.
Some of the issues arise from the superannuation industry not fully understanding that the reforms require more than just sending and receiving messages.
You need to also be able to “un-package that message and then deal with the contents on a day-to-day basis – the whole intent of SuperStream is that you move to that in a wholly automated fashion without any manual intervention,” Mr Tong said.
“In dealing with the message when it arrives at the funds, we have found that the industry has taken some time to get to grips with.”
The software providers believe the problems are particularly hard for the smaller funds.
“Those institutions that already have a large and well-funded IT capability have tended to be able to get ahead of the curve … at the other scale, where you have got the small self-administered funds, who don’t have existing IT capability to draw on, have found the journey a lot tougher,” Mr Tong said.
The software provider believes, beyond the July 1 deadline, particularly around the data and data validation, there are still likely to be transition problems.
“The industry is realistic and the government is also realistic to know that it is not going to be a flick-of-a-switch thing, and we are not going to [be able to] 100 per cent operate by that model on day one,” Mr Tong stated.
