Title: / SuperStream Technical Committee (SSTC)
Venue: / Australian Taxation Office – 52 Goulburn Street, Sydney
Meeting Rooms – L18.712 & L18.713
Teleconference |Phone: 1800 888 453 | Access Pin: 81746019
Event Date: / WednesdayJune142017 / Start: / 10:00 / Finish: / 11:34
Chair: / Ty Winmill
contact / Louise Ison / Contact Phone: / 02 62164654
Attendees:
Names/Section / Ty Winmill
Graham Dawson
Chao Wang
Michael Cooper
Shane Moore
Simon Cho
Linda Cheesman
Timothy Stimson
Damian Haslam
Yong Zhang
Grant Doherty
Gary Jacobs
John Kennedy
Jamie Hancock
Matt Giuliano
Matt Rea
Natasha Cox
Michelle Bower
David Kerr
Tristan Herbert
Fraser Cooper-Southam / ATO
ATO
ATO
ATO
ATO
ATO
ATO
ATO
ATO
GBST
Westpac
BT Financial Group
CBA Group
IFF/Australian Payroll Association
IQ Group, ASFA E-Commerce Group
Link Group
ASP
Deloitte
NAB
CSC
Superchoice
Apologies:
Name/Section
next Meeting: / Teleconference Wednesday28June2017
Agenda item: / 1
TOPIC: / Welcome and acceptance of minutes

The minutes from May2017 were accepted.

Agenda item: / 2
TOPIC: / Action Items

Action items were reviewed in the master action items list.

Agenda item: / 3
topic: / Services

Shane Moore gave an update on the state of SuperStream services:

  • There was some performance enhancements dropped into the channel 3 weeks ago.
    It may or may not have resulted in visible performance enhancements.
  • There have been dedicated resources from our Enterprise Technology team looking at stability and speed improvements around our super services.
    Our preference is for any improvements not to result in an outage, we would prefer it dealt with incrementally and no changes should require the platform to be brought down.
  • In relation to the FVS the validation of certification field is being dropped into EVTE this week.
    Planned production drop for that change on the 5th of august.
  • This change will not require recertification of software.
    The new MST reporting guidance and conformance suite are available now and there will be a production drop 2 months from now on the 5th of August.
  • We are making an update to the ebMS header for FVSGet, We have scheduled an internal Production drop for the 5th of August but we have yet toschedulethe external component to that.
  • We are looking at an external production drop in October for the header change.
    We can have a longer EVTE cycle, possibly 3 months instead of 2 if required.
  • Ty Winmill addressed the room with a question on performance, in the last couple of weeks:Has anyone seen improved performance or were there any observations from around the table?Members noted that they have not received much feedback from their relevant parties but there were some mentions that things were a little better.
  • Grant Doherty raised a suggestion in relation to bulk services, after your upgrade you would have some timings for SuperTick and Super Match bulk processing, we’d like to see a graph showing performance of batches based on the size of the batch and the average transaction time. From that we’d like official communication from the ATO to advise the file size that needs to be sent.

Agenda item: / 4
topic: / SBR2 Platform

Craig Woodburn and Chris Thorne were unavailable to provide an update.

Agenda item: 5
Topic: / Rollovers V2 Implementation update

Michael Cooper provided an update on Rollovers V2 implementation:

  • Fortnightly major USM remittance runs and weekly runs in the off weeks are continuing.
  • Around 20 runs have been completed since Rollovers was implemented.
    It’s safe to say that we’ve detected all major issue that could arise during that period.

Linda Cheesman continued the update:

  • Payment mismatch issues are still being investigated.
    On the 11th of May there was a CRT alert about a particular run we had a number of payment mismatch issues due to some accounting work that was done to member accounts. There is still a lot of remediation work being done around that but it is 95% completed.
  • Where we have files that are larger than 4999 transactions or individual member information they have been getting stuck at the ATO end. This issue was reported 09/06/2017 as of this morning the 14 files that were stuck have been released. The issue is under investigation.
  • John Kennedy raised a question around the payment lagand if it has been raised in priority. Linda Cheesman advised that it is currently lower in priority but a change is going to be implemented so that the data message and the payment are lined up to a more appropriate level. We don’t want to implement until we have all other issues under control and we have better stability.
  • John Kennedy expressed concern about the lag for contributions payments and Grant Doherty went on to say that you can’t verify that the data message is correct until you have the money and it matches up. The key thing is that this is causing funds difficulty and creating a backlog of data and messages.A backlog means additional cost, and cost is something that no one wants to have increasing.
    We need this to be addressed as soon as possible before the ramp up in August etc.
  • Linda advised that the implementation of a fix could be done relatively quickly and that she would take issue offline to provide a firm answer.
  • Industry advised that this issue needs to be escalated and dealt with as soon as possible as it will have a large impact on their workflow and cost.Linda clarified that there are a number of Treasury regulations that prevent the ATO from sending the money any earlier and that delaying the message is the current resolution on the table

Agenda item: / 6
Topic: / Contributions V2 Implementation update

Michael Cooper provided an update on Rollovers V2 implementation:

  • Testing is underway with a quarter of our original test pool.
    Over 20 funds in test now and over half of those have completed and passed testing.
    We are starting to ramp up now with our scheduled volumes coming on.
  • Small issues that have come up are mostly easy fixes.
  • The big area of attention last week was the BDV space we had our 5 funds and 3 gateways participate in our initial major Co cons remittance run.
    Minor issues reported, all quickly resolved.
  • Funds have now confirmed the payments have been received and allocated the required money to member accounts.
  • Some more funds will be joining the BDV process this week.
    With a larger sample size we can get to exercise all the scenarios.
  • Grant Doherty raised a question around B2B contributions and went on to explain,

On the 31st of August the ATO made it clear that refunds via B2B must be made in accordance with the Standard, very specifically making payments with a reference which is carried over from your response messages.I have some statistics from our side of things, so for the month of May approx. 60% of refunds could be matched based on the payment and the response message, there’s nearly 40% that are not currently there which indicates that there is a lot of work to be done between now and the end of August. The key thing here that overlaps with Government contributions we’ve essentially got people doing these things manually to work around these issues, I’ve made it very clear to my management that by the end of August that’s not going to be required because everything will be beautiful, but the ATO is not going to be expecting that people are going to be responding incorrectly.

Agenda item: / 7
Topic: / Guidance notes

Graham Dawson addressed the meeting in regards to guidance notes:

  • In the SSTC report sent there is a note at the end about the problems with the ATO taxonomy file and the alternative that is being provided in the meantime.
  • There are some stats for SuperTick 1 and 2 included as well.
  • In May of 2015 there was a note in the specification that said “Currently there is no edit check in SuperStream because the components don’t necessarily match in the same way as the RBS forms instructions specify for normal roll overs.” This issue showed itself after we issued Guidance note 48,Yong reported that there were some transactions rejected.
  • A Guidance note has been drafted based on that information. It proposes that we put information in the message tuples to indicate that it is an ISAT (Involuntary Superannuation Account Transfer) transfer.The original Guidance note said receiving solutions should continue to use their current process and must not reject Rollover transactions that do not comply until the implementation date.
  • The issue that has been highlighted is an incompatibility between ISAT and the normal Rollover reconciliation rules.
  • Industry expressed some concern that this issue was not in the scope of SuperStream.
  • Ty Winmill advised that if SuperStream is used by agreement as a vehicle for ISAT process that is fine but no guidance should be required.

Agenda item: / 8
Topic: / Papers for discussion

There were no papers for discussion.

Agenda item: / 9
Topic: / Other business

Death Benefit Rollovers

Ty Winmill advised that there will be some updates to the Rollovers Standard that will require a version update but that’s just to put the Rollover Death Benefit in scope.
We need to align both parts of this and we can bring it together using our change management process.We have had a request put in so we need to follow that right through and then bring those proposed artefact back; the new change, the document, what we’re bringing into scope, what is the transitional arrangement, what does the actual form look like and then what is the implementation window.The key principle is that we don’t want to impact systems at this point.

Natasha Cox sought clarification on the interim arrangement

Ty Winmill responded, through the process that Jason Lucchese is running, the ownership of that transition and feedback should go through that process and that will be consultative with industry.

Framework out of that consultation will come through SSTC as part of the Change Request and then we will have to have a look at what the impacts are and then formally publish that through that process.

Meeting closed at 11:34am