Australian Super's Shawn Blackmore
Super Consumers Australia has called on AustralianSuper to resolve its technology problems amid concern that pension-phase members of the fund may not be able to adjust their income payments ahead of Christmas and the holiday season.
The country’s largest super fund has been rebuked by thousands of its members over the last four weeks after an attempt to upgrade the company’s internet and mobile service portals triggered a meltdown of its systems.
Members have been unable to login into their accounts, make online drawdowns, trade shares and other investment assets and download pension schedules.
SCA director Xavier O’Halloran says it is critical that Australian Super gets its act together and restore full digital access for members.
“Consumers are using their super funds more actively these days, particularly those in the pension phase who regularly need to adjust amounts they draw down and disclose payment information to Centrelink,” he said.
“It’s really up to a super fund to deliver consistent access so that members can perform those tasks and meet their obligations as service platforms become digital.”
“I really expect the fund to be on top of that because the implications for people in the weeks leading up to Christmas and the holiday season are significant.
“Australian Super should remedy this issue as soon as possible.”
The fund’s senior management yesterday broke their public silence on the fiasco after a video and transcript of the 2022 annual members meeting held on 29 November was published on the Australian Super website.
At the online meeting Shawn Blackmore, the super fund’s executive head of member experience, answered queries from members about “issues that have been experienced” since the new platforms went live on 14 November.
The questions were not put directly to Blackmore by members but were relayed by another senior executive, Rose Kerlin, who acted as a moderator of the meeting.
Blackmore, who appeared to be reading from notes, conceded that the fund was still working to fix technical problems that were continuing to impede members’ use of the digital platforms.
He said fixes for unavailable features and services would occur “shortly” or “in the foreseeable future”.
“Now, what I’d like to do is, on behalf of the fund, apologise to any members that were inconvenienced by this,” Blackmore said.
“We didn’t set out to have these issues but we’ve had a good team available 24/7, that when they’ve been identified, to be able to work and respond, to monitor and address the fixes, when required, and we will continue to do that throughout the foreseeable future.”
Blackmore described the testing of the faltering systems upgrade as “thorough”.
Super Consumers Australia is encouraging affected members of the fund to lodge formal complaints with the company and to advance their cases to the Australian Financial Complaints Authority if they are unable find resolution.
O’Halloran said affected members would need to be patient because the process for dealing with consumer complaints in the financial services sector was slow.
“Under current arrangements super funds have 45 days to resolve a member’s complaint – that’s a huge amount of time for someone wanting to access an income payment,” he said.
“However, Super Consumers Australia encourages people affected by the technology incident at Australian Super to make a complaint.”