The $4.1 billion, 50,000-member Equipsuper is nearing the end of its member administration review, with a change in providers looking likely.
The Melbourne-based hybrid fund found itself last June as a client of Precision Administration Services, the firm which resulted from SunSuper’s purchase of the Citistreet Australia member admin business, which was fleetingly owned by ING Australia as part of the global deal which saw ING buy the aborted Citigroup-State Street joint venture.
Industry observers say the review, being conducted by the Heron Partnership, is likely to result in Equipsuper following the footsteps of another ‘external’ Precision client, Non-Government Schools Super, away from the administrator, which in addition to being 100 per cent owned by SunSuper also accounts for roughly 90 per cent of its transactions.
NGS Super is scheduled to go ‘live’ under Mercer administration on November 1.
Equipsuper’s communications manager, Geoff Brooks, said the fund’s contract with Precision would run out on June 30 next year, but that the fund would map out arrangements beyond that within the next few weeks.
He admitted Equipsuper was a complicated proposition for any prospective administrator, given the scheme has 49 different defined benefit plans and 30 different accumulation plans, the legacy of a spate of corporate fund takeovers in the early part of this century. Many of them differ only by insurer, as a result of Equipsuper undertakings to preserve a members’ terms and conditions from their previous fund.
Brooks said that with 50,000 members, Equipsuper lacked the scale to viably insource administration.
