Superannuation Client Relationship Team

Alert 030/2015 Update

Electronic Portability Form – System issue - Update

Update

1. Duplication issue

We are continuing to investigate the issue where a significant number of duplicate member records have appeared in Electronic Portability Forms (EPFs) files since 2 July 2015.

We are aware of an on-going issue where duplicate EPF’s are possible in some circumstances; however the numbers prior to last week had been small. It appears the technical issues experienced by Online Services last week may have exacerbated the existing issue resulting in multiple duplicates for many funds.

We are monitoring the situation this week and expect the larger than normal volumes will reduce as our Online Services stabilise. We will provide you a further update later this week.

Note: We have also been working on a solution to eradicate all duplicates.

2. Reduction in the number of EPF’s

Some funds have also reported a significant drop in numbers of EPF’s received this week compared to last. We can confirm there has been a reduction in the number of EPF’s received from clients via our Online Services. We will monitor these trends over the next few days and investigate to determine any systemic issue which may be causing the drop in numbers.

We can confirm that we are not currently holding any large backlogs of EPF’s to be sent to funds.

3. Business Portal - File Transfer facility

You may have found access to this facility has been very intermittent over recent days resulting in you not being able to access and download EPFs.

The ATO acknowledges the inconvenience and poor experience endured during this time; we are attempting to resolve this issue at the earliest opportunity. Please review the ‘Key messages’ on the Business Portal for updates on this service.

What you need to do

· Where you identify genuine duplicate records you can delete the offending form within the EPF file and continue processing

· Several funds have indicated they have successfully accessed and downloaded EPFs early in the morning and late at night, you may wish to consider this approach whilst we are experiencing these issues.

We thank you for your patience in this matter.