A plea for payments reform

The Cooper Review into superannuation, as expected, supports serious reform of the processing and administration of super payments, though the final report of the review team leaves it to Treasury to work out what policy measures an interventionist government, or a reluctant industry, might pursue.

The tenor of the review, in a chapter on superannuation payment processing it dubs "SuperStream", is that super funds, fund administrators and employers have to take the initiative and make electronic processing of payments the norm in the industry.

Suggested mechanisms for getting there are less clear cut.

The review proposes one stick: a fee paid by employers that insist on paying by cheque, though it does not mention how much this fee could be.

There are process improvements called for.

APRA, the review recommends, must develop a publicly accessible database of all superannuation funds that anyone handling super payments may reference. Super funds will also need to standardise their collection of data on contributors.

Tax file numbers are proposed as a universal identifier, and the review also suggests that laws on anti-money laundering be watered down at least in the case of super.

The review team seemed uncertain as to which industry or public entity to look to shepherd these payments reforms along.

Standards Australia received a mention as did the Payments System Board, though the PSB is unlikely to pick up the implicit recommendation that it designate superannuation and start making regulations for the sector.

The Cooper Review provided one graphic on what an ideal superannuation payment processing architecture might look like, and borrowed from the submission from the firm Payment Adviser.

Payment Adviser is one of the few (and maybe the only) vendor to work out data standards that suit payroll processing firms and superannuation funds.

The firm's technology supports the hub for managing superannuation rollovers adopted by the Industry Funds Forum. Cuscal, the service entity for credit unions, is the provider of this hub.