Super Exempt From Privacy - Plea To Business
15/04/05
Tasplan Super has called on the Business community to assist super funds in helping employees to stay connected to their superannuation.
Lost Super is a significant problem in Australia with approximately 2.5 Australians having a share in an estimated $6.5 million in Lost Super.
According to Neil Cassidy, General Manager of Tasplan Super, The reasons for the problem are simple - people relocate or change jobs and forget to tell their super fund ; they become 'disconnected' from their super.
"In the worst cases, they even forget that a fund has money invested on their behalf!" Cassidy said
Funds like Tasplan are constantly trying to 're-unite' members with their money with one of the simplest ways of doing this being to seek the help of an employer when a piece of member correspondence has been returned.
"Where super contributions are being made on behalf of an employee, and the super fund has an 'invalid' address, many businesses are only too happy to play a part in 're-uniting' employees with their super."
The alternative has been for some super funds to engage a 'search firm' to find the member and to charge that member a 'search fee'. According to Cassidy, that is a road that Tasplan would prefer not to take at this time.
"An important part of obtaining the co-operation of the business community is to dispel the myth that supply of an employee's current address to a super fund is a breach of the Privacy Act."
Section 7B of the Privacy Act exempts employee records from the Privacy Act in situations where the employer is providing information to a super fund.
Acts and practices of employers in relation to employee records as they relate to current and former employment relationships are exempt from the National Privacy Principles ; in other words, an employer is doing nothing wrong by helping a super fund update its records.
"On occasions in the past, employers have cited the Privacy Act as a reason for not providing contact details to Tasplan. Tasplan has confirmed with the Office of the Federal Privacy Commissioner that this is not the case." Cassidy said.
For its part Tasplan is sensitive to the difficulties of operating a business and would seek to work with employers to develop a mutually convenient way of communicating employee contact details.
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