COVID-19 Early Release Scheme - Issue 9
This report includes applications received between 20 April - 21 June 2020.
High volumes of applications are expected for the start of the second tranche of the COVID-19 Early Release Scheme in the first week of 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 21 June 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 21 June, payments made to eligible members have taken an average of 3.3 business days after receipt of the application from the Australian Tax Office (ATO) and 95 per cent have been made within five business days.
Over the week to 21 June, superannuation funds made payments to 154,000 members, bringing the total number of payments to approximately 2.3 million since inception. The total value of payments during the week was $1.2 billion, with $17.1 billion paid since inception. The average payment made over the period since inception is $7,492.
Fund-level data
The fund-level data shows that 150 of the 177 funds (85 per cent) that submitted data made early release payments in the period since inception to 21 June 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, 133 (89 per cent) completed more than 90 per cent of payments within the five business days guideline indicated by APRA. Further, with limited exceptions (1.8 per cent), payments to members have been completed within ten or more business days from receipt of applications from the ATO.
The ten funds with the highest number of applications received from the ATO have made 1.52 million payments worth a total of $11.21 billion. The average payment from these funds was $7,380, with over 95 per cent of payments made within five days.
Details of the industry-level data is provided below:
- This link provides details on payments and processing timeframes for funds that have made payments to members in the period ending 21 June 2020.
- This link provides a summary of the data that has been reported to APRA by funds for that period.
High volumes of applications are expected for the start of the second tranche of the COVID-19 Early Release Scheme in the first week of 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.
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.