Building loyalty through excellence
Overview
This year ComSuper focused on continuing to improve customer service, and achieved faster delivery of services to members in many areas. External benchmarking in 2007–08 confirmed ComSuper’s ability to provide a low cost, high quality service in a complex environment. The superannuation environment is constantly evolving and in 2008–09 we implemented a number of legislative changes including:
- the same-sex superannuation legislation
- superannuation splitting for de facto couples
- the second and final stage of the Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorism Financing Act 2006 (AML/CTF Act) measures
- the new Graded Other Ranks Pay Scale salary determination issued by the Defence Force Remuneration Tribunal
- implementing an interim solution to comply with the ordinary time earnings (OTE) requirements of the Superannuation Guarantee (Administration) Act 1992 (Superannuation Guarantee Act) for the military schemes.
In addition, we delivered on our commitment to improving the delivery of our corporate priorities:
Paying correct and timely benefits to members
Not only did we process more member benefits compared to the previous year, we achieved an average processing time of four days in 2008–09 for both APS and military scheme members.
For the APS schemes this represented a considerable improvement over the average of 12 days to process benefits in 2007–08.
By delivering benefits to members faster we were able to able reduce the number of APS scheme applications on hand from 1400 in July 2008 to just 250 in June 2009. The military scheme benefits processing times were also a significant achievement in light of an 18% increase in the number of benefits processed in 2008–09 compared to the previous year. We achieved this by focusing our efforts on improvements to our internal business processes.
Sending correct and timely statements to members
This year we also focused heavily on improving our statements processes, with tangible improvements in reporting, reconciliation and the quality control processes being implemented in the 2009 calendar year. We undertook greater development and testing of our systems than in previous years, and as a result, all statements—including those calculated manually due to the complexities of some members’ records—were sent out to members by the legislated deadline of 31 December 2008. As part of the 2008 statement pack, military scheme members were encouraged to obtain an access number to Member Services Online and elect to access their member statement online in the future.
Improving our service delivery
Member satisfaction levels remained high in 2008–09 with a rating of 77% as measured by the Quality Service Index. We have implemented a customer service escalation process in the schemes, whereby members who contact us with a complex query receive a return call by a subject matter expert. This new process has greatly improved the quality and speed of our customer service, with a corresponding reduction the number of calls to our customer service centres and associated complaints.
We kept APS employers informed through our monthly newsletter, Employer News and merged our APS Employer Services and Member Accounts teams to provide a more efficient service to employers by cross-skilling and workload sharing. We also introduced two relationship managers, who liaise regularly with APS employers to identify and help resolve superannuation and member information issues.
We strengthened relationships with employers by providing training and assistance on various legislative changes. We continued to deliver specific services for the scheme trustees; in particular, accounting services, preparation of communication materials and secretariat services.
We worked with the Department of Defence to ensure the dissemination of the mid-year update newsletter to 48,348 military scheme contributors via email for the first time. This update is also emailed to preserved members who have ‘opted in’ for this delivery method.
We also continued to participate and contribute in a whole of government review aimed at streamlining services for Australian Defence Force (ADF) members and their families. This has already resulted in enhanced and streamlined invalidity assessment processes. An automated case management system will be introduced in 2009–10, which will further streamline the invalidity assessment process. The system is expected to improve case selection by enabling better identification of members whose conditions are likely to change and, in response, prioritise those that most require review.
To minimise our impact on the environment and achieve cost efficiencies, annual reports to members, produced by our Trustee Boards for the applicable schemes, are available online, with printed copies being available only on request. These reports detail the performance of the members fund for the financial year.
Improving the quality of our data
The amalgamation of the APS Employer Relations and Member Accounts teams in January, coupled with the establishment of a Data Quality Taskforce has resulted in improved services to APS employers. The restructured Employer Services team is dedicated to providing consistent and streamlined assistance to APS employers on superannuation matters, maintaining and updating CSS and PSS member records, as well as conducting various data integrity exercises to ensure member records are accurate.
Working collaboratively with our stakeholders, particularly the Department of Defence, we have also been able to achieve considerable improvements in data quality, including the correction of over 2700 member records. The improved accuracy of our data is enhancing our capacity to provide effective services to our stakeholders and clients.
