COVID-19 Early Release Scheme - Issue 12

This dashboard contains the latest data on the COVID-19 Superannuation Early Release Scheme, from inception of the Scheme to 12 July 2020.

High volumes of applications are expected for the start of the second trancheof the COVID-19 Early Release Scheme in early July. This may impact the processing time for payments being made by funds. 

An accessible version of the dashboard is available here.

Additional Commentary

APRA has received early release data submissions for the period ended 12 July 2020 from 176 funds. Funds have submitted on a best endeavours basis.

Over the period from the inception of the scheme on 20 April to 12 July, payments made to eligible members have taken an average of 3.2 business days after receipt by funds of the application from the Australian Tax Office (ATO) and 96.2 per cent have been made within five business days.

Over the week to 12 July, 581,000 applications were received by funds of which 109,000 were initial applications and 472,000 were repeat applications. This brought the total number of initial applications to 2.8 million and repeat applications to 0.8 million since the inception of the scheme. 

Over the week to 12 July, superannuation funds made payments to 734,000 members, bringing the total number of payments by funds to their members to approximately 3.3 million since inception. The total value of payments during the week was $6.2 billion, with $25.3 billion paid since inception. The average payment made over the period since inception is $7,718 overall and $8,755 when considering repeat applications only.

As at 12 July 2020, 90 per cent of applications received since inception had been paid. This is up from the previous week (83 per cent) but down from a fortnight earlier (95 per cent) as funds continue to process the large number of new applications received at the start of this financial year. 

Fund-level data

The fund-level data shows that 151 of the 176 funds (86 per cent) that submitted data made early release payments in the period since inception to 12 July 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). Further, 136 of the funds have reported repeat applications received.

Among all funds that made payments, 110 (73 per cent) completed more than 90 per cent of payments within the five business days guideline indicated by APRA. With limited exceptions (1.2 per cent), payments to members have been completed within nine or fewer business days from receipt of applications from the ATO.

The 10 funds with the highest number of applications received from the ATO have made 2.2 million payments worth a total of $16.5 billion. The average payment from these funds was $7,641, with 97 per cent of payments made within five days. 

Details of the industry-level data (entities with more than four members) is provided below:

• This link provides details on payments and processing timeframes for funds that have made payments to members in the period ending 12 July 2020.

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

• The reporting week from 29 June 2020 to 5 July 2020 included the end of the period for which members could apply for up to $10,000 for the 2019/20 financial year and the start of the period for which members could apply for up to $10,000 for the 2020/21 financial year. It therefore included a mix of applications received that relate to each of the 2019/20 and 2020/21 financial years.
  
   
• An ‘initial application’ is the first application made in respect of a member account whether this occurred in the 2019/20 financial year application period or the 2020/21 financial year application period. A ‘repeat application’ is an application for a member account that previously submitted an initial application.  All repeat applications relate to the 2020/21 financial year application period.
  
   
• The number of initial applications is measured by member accounts and exceeds the number of underlying individuals with approved applications since some individuals have applied across more than one superannuation account. 

High volumes of applications are expected for the start of the second trancheof the COVID-19 Early Release Scheme in early July. This may impact the processing time for payments being made by funds. 

A text version of the infographic is available here.

Guideline payment processing time for an application made on Wednesday 1 July would be Tuesday 14 July (4 business days processing by the ATO and 5 business days processing by the fund). High volumes may result in delays to this processing time.