Citistreet exits stand-alone corporate game

Member administrator Citistreet has after two years exited its long-term contract to service Watson Wyatt’s stand-alone corporate superannuation clients, with the work to be performed by IBM Superlife from April 1.

There are 41 funds, representing 66,000 members, due to be transitioned to IBM Superlife under the deal. All 60-odd Citistreet staff working full-time on Watson Wyatt funds will be offered a position with IBM Superlife, according to Citistreet chief executive Stuart Korchinski. The managing director of Watson Wyatt, Andrew Boal, said Citistreet first indicated it wished to concentrate on its industry fund and master trust businesses last April. Watson Wyatt had outsourced its in-house administration business to Citistreet in 2004. Following a market review, Boal said IBM Superlife was identified as an appropriate successor, in part because both organisations had a healthy number of stand-alone corporate funds in their client bases (IBM’s foundation client is the Russell Investments book of former Towers Perrin client funds, which include BHP Billiton and OneSteel). Boal said that disruption for its clients would be minimised by the transfer of the Citistreet staff, and the integration of the existing ‘Wyben’ administration platform into IBM’s technology infrastructure. According to IBM Superlife director, Jackie Korhonen, the Wyben platform will be complemented by a “;portal”; for IBM’s imaging and workflow technology, which allow all its call centre staff to access consolidated member information regardless of the underlying platform. Assuming transition of all the Watson Wyatt clients, IBM Superlife will have over 300,000 members under administration in Australia. Korchinski said Citistreet would continue to service defined benefit funds, and its servicing of Sunsuper’s corporate super clients (such as Goodman Fielder) would be unaffected. He added the Watson Wyatt deal had accounted for less than 10 per cent of Citistreet’s revenue, and had little synergy with the larger industry fund and master trust sections of its business.