Profit-to-member super funds lead the way to streamline and strengthen customer service
23 February 2024
Australia’s profit-to-member super funds, serving more than 10 million everyday Australians, have met with the Australian Government to discuss initiatives to streamline and strengthen customer service.
Profit-to-member super funds and the Super Members Council (SMC) called today’s roundtable with Assistant Treasurer Stephen Jones to discuss further actions the Government can take to smooth and speed up the claims process for insurance and death benefits.
They also briefed the Minister on an array of new initiatives super funds are taking proactively to strengthen service delivery.
“The entire super industry is deeply committed to ensuring the highest possible standards of customer service – that’s what Australians with their retirement savings in super rightly expect,” SMC Chief Executive Misha Schubert said.
“But we know that, on occasion, the super sector has fallen short of meeting those expectations – and that’s not good enough. This meeting is a clear signal of the sector’s shared resolve to do better – with profit-to-member funds determined to lead the way.”
“The vast majority of insurance and death benefit claims are relatively straightforward to resolve, and we’re acutely aware that, in these cases, anything less than a quick and easy process could lead to further distress for members at an already deeply traumatic time.”
However, in complex claims – like cases with multiple death benefit claimants, cases where a person has a complex relationship history or when someone leaves no binding death nominations – stringent legal obligations require trustees to undertake meticulous checks before payments can be made.
Almost all claims and payments are made as swiftly as possible.
Australia’s super funds answer millions of member contacts each year – by phone, online, email and social media. Consumer research shows most super fund members report high satisfaction rates with their super fund’s service.
But the sector must continuously strive to meet members’ expectations – and further significant work to improve customer service is already underway.
Each super fund approaches how they service the needs of their members differently, based on a deep knowledge of their own super fund members, but recent examples of initiatives some funds have taken to further strengthen customer service include:
- Reviewing customer service systems to identify ‘points of friction’ in claims processes
- Speeding up processes through digitising, automation and other tech-enabled initiatives
- Giving members better visibility of claim status so they can track what stage their claim is at
- Delivering more support for members – including some funds creating a team of in-house claims assessors
- Strengthening communications to members, so they have clearer information on claims processes and expected timeframes.
The roundtable also discussed regulatory barriers the Australian Government could remove which would help ensure continued swift processing and the highest standards of service, including:
- Creating a simple and digital binding death nomination form – which would eliminate the need for submitting hardcopy forms with dual signatures from two witnesses
- Ensuring all ID documents issued by States and Territories are included in the Government’s digital verification service and that the detail on death certificates is enough to process claims
- Legally recognising Indigenous kinship arrangements and culturally adopted children as death beneficiaries
- Strengthening integration between the Australian Tax Office, Services Australia and super funds. This could enable a super fund member’s eligibility for financial hardship payments to be confirmed quickly (by the ATO) and enable details to be shared (with the consent of super fund members) of their eligibility for the Age Pension or other government payments so super funds can help their members plan even more effectively for retirement (Services Australia)