Another huge and seemingly immovable block on the road to a better system had been that the various administrators had such different processes. Then suddenly, last month, a rapprochement between AAS, Pillar Administration and Superpartners was announced and heralded as an agreement on a set of principles and protocols covering data and money flow for rollovers. Project manager of the alliance, industry veteran Robert Van Woerkom, says the pilot, to be working by June, was inspired by the Medicare clearing facility for SMEs and the banking system’s interconnected protocols. The three alliance partners’ statistics give them the clout to try to unite the sector: collectively they administer $173 billion for 12 million member accounts on behalf of 45 funds, collect more than $25 billion in contributions a year, and generate more than 45 million transactions annually. The 420,000 transfers annually between each other represent more than $4 billion. Van Woerkom says the alliance will be open to other administrators, such as Colonial First State, BT and Mercer, as well.