APRA fund transfers to SMSFs in 1 to 11 days

The regulatory requirements dictate that transfers from Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA) regulated superannuation funds to self-managed funds should happen within three days, but new data has revealed at least one instance of a transfer taking 71 business days.

That data has been shared by Director and Founder of Grow SMSF, Kris Kitto who has told social media subscribers that for the past 12 months his business has been tracking almost all transfer customers have submitted at Grow SMSF.

The bottom line, according to Kitto’s data is that the average for all transfers to be approved is 6.6 business days, with the quickest transfer being the same day and the slowest transfer being 71 days.

His message identified industry Hostplus as being the slowest with an analysis across 120 transfers generating an average of 11 business days.

It said that by far the fastest APRA fund in terms of transfers was Unisuper which, across 51 transfers, averaged two business days “including many same day/next day”.

“The most transfers we processed were from AustralianSuper. across 191 transfers, their average was 8 business days,” Kitto’s post said.

He noted that the regulations require all super funds to pay transfers within three business days after they had received a valid transfer request, confirmed the account holder identity and SMSF bank account details and validated the SMSF details via the Australian Taxation Office.

“So, transfer times can be impacted by how long it takes the account holder (member) to send their ID and SMSF bank statement to their super fund,” Kotto’s post said.

“One of the reasons Hostplus transfers take so much longer is that they’re one of the few super funds that are still forcing their members to post via snail mail original certified copies of ID and certified SMSF bank statement.”