Super funds plug and play administration approach

Superannuation funds need to look to their own capability with respect to the value-adds that go beyond member administration, a Super Review roundtable has been told.

Discussing the evolving shape of the superannuation administration sector, Willis Towers Watson head of retirement income solutions, Nick Callil said that funds were changing what they expected from their administrators and needed to consider what was reasonable for the administrator to do.

He said that, in the past, anything that involved data was regarded as belonging to the administrator and that funds which wanted to do more with data were constrained by what the administrator was prepared to do.

"Now funds realise that there is a lot of value in the data and harnessing it is the key," Callil said.

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He said that it was in these circumstances that funds need to clarify what they wanted the administrator to do and what they wanted to do for themselves around data analytics.

Pillar Administration chief executive, Peter Brook agreed saying that while administrators needed to have a good core service, different funds had different needs according to their size.

Brook referenced the value of pursuing "plug and play" arrangements where funds could plug their own systems into that of the administrator.

"You plug it in and it works or the administrator can provide it," he said.