Speaking to InvestorDaily, SCT chairperson Jocelyn Furlan said the new complaints team was created using the $1.04 million earmarked in the federal Budget for the complaints backlog.
The team, which began work on July 1, consists of four complaints analysts and a support officer to help with the administration, Ms Furlan said.
“We’ve decided to streamline the complaints they deal with. One of the analysts is dealing solely with death benefit distributions, one’s dealing with disability complaints and the other two are doing administration complaints,” she said.
With the new team dealing with the backlog, the rest of the SCT’s staff are freed up to deal with ongoing complaints, Ms Furlan added.
Along with the creation of the new complaints team, the SCT is also trying to make the complaints process more efficient.
“We’re doing an investigation of the complaints before we contact the trustee to ask for information to try and minimise the number of times we have to go backwards and forwards,” Ms Furlan said.
In the April-June 2013 quarter, the SCT received 2,961 telephone complaints, up 7.5 per cent on the previous quarter. However, the tribunal has put a new recorded message in place to filter out complaints that are not within its jurisdiction, which has seen the number of phone call complaints over the past 12 months decrease, said Ms Furlan.
“In the case of early release of super, a lot of people call the tribunal and find out they need to talk to the Department of Human Services instead. Alternatively, they might need to talk to the super fund or one of the regulators,” she said.
The SCT has also received a “little bit” of funding for digitisation, along with some funding for the part-time members who have been required for the greater number of complaints going to the review stage, Ms Furlan continued.
In the short time that the new complaints team has been in place, the SCT has already seen early resolution of “eight or nine” of the 550 complaints sitting in the backlog, Ms Furlan said.
