Regulators to struggle with Stronger Super volumes

The Australian Tax Office (ATO) and the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA) are likely to struggle with the volume of data they will receive under the SuperStream and new APRA reporting requirements. 

DST Bluedoor executive director Martin Spedding said the technology impost on the superannuation industry had been high - and legislative requirements were still changing days before they were due to be implemented. 

Spedding said that legislative work was still being finalised on taxonomy and fund validation, which had created lack of alignment between industry and regulators. 

“We have found that the ATO and APRA are using their own fund codes, while funds themselves are using APIR SPIN codes or trying to use ABNs plus three unique characters to identify funds,” Spedding said. 

DST Bluedoor compliance and quality assurance manager Anna Cara said this was indicative of the work which still needed to take place within the regulators.  

“APRA will have to come to terms with the sheer volume data under Stronger Super. No-one is discussing how the Government will distribute data internally, or how they will find and assess potential problems and enforce compliance or penalties on those in breach of the requirements,” Cara said. 

Spedding said the scale of reporting by superannuation funds would increase, with data required for reporting to be drawn from multiple parties and likely to require lengthy and costly manual consolidation. 

According to Spedding, 32 reports will be required to be lodged by superannuation funds, with 22 of them mandatory from 1 July this year. Eleven of that number will require inputs from investment managers or custodians. 

This increase in reports will also see superannuation funds report on 4000 data items versus 800 items currently required. DST Bluedoor expects that many funds will still be manually entering data as they seek to integrate with APRA’s SuperStream system. 

“Questions still remain across the industry around how data will be moved and audited so it remains correct when funds submit it. Most of the industry is saying it is too hard and recognise the deadline - but are still not sure how it will all work,” Spedding said.

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