No more movement on lost money, says ASFA

Current strategies to reunite members with lost super and consolidate member accounts need time to play out before any new processes are implemented, according to the Association of Superannuation Funds of Australia (ASFA).

In a submission to Treasury, ASFA said it still strongly supported the delay of the government's interfund account consolidation measures pending a review in late 2014.

It stated the suite of proposed reforms being rolled out in the coming months and years should be implemented and allowed to "settle in" before assessing how to proceed.

However, ensuring data quality was adequate and giving members "line of sight" of their super interests could encourage further consolidation, according to ASFA.

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It said the ATO could contact individuals with multiple super interests and direct them to the SuperSeeker website, or include super information on tax returns. Employers could be mandated to include the name of the super fund on payslips, ASFA said.

ASFA said the ASFA-ITM data quality assessment should be mandatory for all Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA)-regulated funds, with results published to a league table to ensure data quality.

Encouraging super funds to actively source correct birth dates would increase the likelihood of the success of Tax File Number (TFN) matching algorithms, ASFA said. The use of transfers under the Accrued Default Accounts notification process — to identify erroneous or missing member identity or contact data — could capture the correct data.

ASFA said there should be an onus on funds to identify and contact members to ensure they have enough cover.