The $3.4 billion Retirement Benefits Fund
of Tasmania (RBF) is preparing to outsource its member administration service for the
first time.

Simon Gillies, chief executive of Tasmania’s public
sector superannuation fund, said four administration providers responded to the
RFP, which closed on Friday.

“The ultimate positioning is that, subject
to evolving a successful RFP candidate, we hope that we’ll be able to validate
and outsource [administration],” Gillies said.

The fund is open to outsourcing
its entire administration, rather than parts of it, depending on what the RFP
candidates are able to offer.

“We follow a business process management
philosophy, so we look at our business processes that we want to export and in
that there are many components,” Gillies said.

“Our view at the moment is that with any
provider we’re trying to find a fair degree of flexibility around what
processes are outsourced and what we retain.

“The whole idea of the RFP is we wanted
others to tell us how flexible they can be, if I can put it that way.”

Chant West is advising the fund on the
selection of an external provider and Gillies said RBF hopes to complete the
process by mid-year.

“We’ve got quite a rigorous protocol that
we’ll go through that will take us through to end of June/July,” he said.

He was unable to say whether there would be
any redundancies as a result of the move to outsource: “Until we’ve done the
RFP we just don’t know.”