Statistical Publication

COVID-19 Early Release Scheme issue 5

Superannuation
Published
1 June 2020
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This report includes applications received between 20 April - 24 May 2020.

Early release scheme dashboard to 24 May 2020

Additional Commentary

APRA has received early release data submissions for the period ended 24 May 2020 from 177 funds. Funds have submitted on a best endeavours basis.

Over the period from the inception of the scheme on 20 April to 24 May, payments that have been made to eligible members have taken an average of 3.3 business days to pay after receipt of the application from the Australian Tax Office (ATO) and 94 per cent have been made within five business days.

Over the week to 24 May, superannuation funds made payments to 220,000 members, bringing the total number of payments to 1.63 million since inception. The total value of payments during the week was $1.6 billion, with $12.2 billion paid since inception. The average payment made over the period since inception is $7,476.

Fund-level data

The fund-level data shows that 149 of the 177 funds that submitted data made early release payments in the period since inception to 24 May 2020. (Note that the fund-level data includes 40 funds for which the data has been published as a group in order to protect the privacy of information for individual members.)

Among all funds that submitted data, 137 (77 per cent) completed more than 90 per cent of payments within the five business days guideline indicated by APRA. Further, with limited exceptions (1.4 per cent), payments to members have been completed within ten or more business days from receipt of applications from the ATO.

The 10 funds with the highest number of applications received from the ATO have made 1.09 million payments worth a total of $8.13 billion. The average payment from these funds was $7,595, with over 93 per cent of payments made within five days.

Details of the industry-level data is provided below:

•    This document provides details on payments and processing timeframes for funds that have made payments to members in the period ending 24 May 2020.

Early Release Scheme entity level reporting - 24 May 2020 period XLSX 5.45 MB ‧ 1 June 2020

•  This document provides a summary of the data that has been reported to APRA by funds for that period.

Early Release Scheme entity level data - 24 May 2020 period XLSX 85.02 KB ‧ 1 June 2020

 

This infographic explains the step by step of the early release of superannuation process.

A text version of the infographic is available here.

Do you have questions about your personal application?

APRA has set out a five day guidance period for payments after receipt of applications from the ATO by funds, but also acknowledges that these timeframes may extend slightly where a Registered Superannuation Entity (RSE) licensee experiences a high volume of applications at any particular time. Delays can also occur in exceptional circumstances – such as where the RSE licensee’s automated checking has identified that additional fraud or other verification steps are required, or where the payment is being made from interests held in defined benefit funds.

If you do not believe you have received the funds you have applied for within a reasonable timeframe it is recommended that you contact your trustee directly to determine if there is a specific reason for the delay. 

Footnotes