Nasfund happy with change to new fund administrator

The National Business

By GYNNIE KERO
NASFUND has told members that the eight-month transition to Kina Investments and Superannuation Services as the fund administrator has reached a satisfactory level to allow normal flow of business for the Fund and its members.
The following milestones were reached during the transition process:

  • Aug 22, 2017 – payments and member maintenance rolled into production;
  • Oct 15, 2017 – contribution allocations rolled into production; and,
  • March 15, 2018 – fund accounting, reconciliations and reporting passed the annual auditing process.

Chairman Hulala Tokome, in a statement, said “the process of change to a new fund administrator has been challenging but rewarding”.
“Not only for Nasfund, but the application of knowledge gained will be for the benefit of the superannuation industry,” he said.
“Complacency can be an enemy of innovation and progress in an age where member expectations about best practice and better service standards has risen.
“To meet these expectations, we need to invest in technology and the latest systems that deliver our service aspirations. We have done this.”
With automation of internal processes for payments and contribution allocations, Nasfund members and employers stand to benefit from the following five global best practices:

  • Speed and accuracy while reducing operational costs;
  • auto-adjudication and settlement of process tasks without requiring some manual work;
  • efficiently manage claim exceptions, identifying bottlenecks and moving cases for expedient resolutions;
  • effectively manage claim interactions between head office and branches, and head office and fund administrator; and,
  • Flexibility and scalability to accommodate changes in customer expectations, regulatory and technological environments.

Nasfund chief executive officer Ian Tarutia said: “From an internal perspective, inventory of cases are captured by Nasfund in electronic format from members and employers, thus, providing a default systematic solution instead of manually moving paper from one process owner to another.
“Routines and processes are now well embedded in our technology platforms, truly institutionalising a lot of the things we do in terms of payments processing, contribution allocations, member maintenance and fund accounting.”