Mercer gets trustee clients set for APRA with Milestone Group’s Regulatory Oversight service

Milestone Group, the specialist provider of optimised fund processing solutions to the global funds industry, today announced that Mercer Australia has selected its Regulatory Oversight service to automate the new Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA) Superannuation reporting requirements for its financial services business.

The Regulatory Oversight solution shares the proven pControl funds platform and provides Mercer with the ability to process the regulatory reporting forms in a highly efficient and scalable way, as APRA’s new rules continue to have a big impact on funds and their administrators.

Ben Walsh, Leader of Mercer’s Financial Services business in the Pacific, said: “The APRA requirements are significant for our administration clients. It is important we continue to deliver accurate reporting to them in a timely manner.”

The regulatory changes introduced by APRA require a 10-fold increase in data content to be reported. Operationally, this requires the acquisition of multiple and disparate data from external providers or internal systems before aggregation, calculation and validation. As Mercer continues to invest in its underlying business infrastructure, pControl enables them to handle multiple inbound data requests for clients and manage submission deadlines.  Walsh went on to say:

The industry is preparing for the challenge of collating data from multiple sources, while managing reporting consistency across different time periods, all without escalating operational costs. We have been particularly impressed by the drill-through and data verification functionality of pControl. The platform provides a full end to end solution that not only satisfies APRA return requirements now, but also positions us well to handle potential future regulatory changes.

In addition to assisting in the completion of APRA reporting, pControl is also supporting Mercer’s initiative of a dedicated portal that allows clients to access and contribute data in a controlled and robust way.

Mark Neary, Managing Director, Business Development, Asia Pacific of Milestone Group, added, “With the significant challenges posed by more sophisticated reporting requirements, it is great to see Mercer has chosen pControl Regulatory Oversight for APRA Superannuation reporting.  Mercer has been extremely proactive in responding to APRA’s rule changes, closely considering the need for strong automation and operational controls to satisfy regulator, auditor and trustee requirements. The selection of pControl puts Mercer in a strong position to handle the wide scope of data and reporting challenges presented by this evolving regulatory landscape.”