iscover Parliament passes super stapling reforms ahead of Payday Super regime
SuperA bill to streamline the choice of fund process for employee onboarding has been passed in preparation for Payday Super.
The Senate passed the Supporting Choice in Superannuation and Other Measures) Bill 2025 on Monday, which is designed to reduce duplicate super accounts and introduce consumer protections in relation to superannuation product advertising.
Amendments to the bill allow greater flexibility for employers or their agents to request an employee's existing stapled fund details from the ATO earlier in the onboarding process. This enables the employer to provide those details to the employee during onboarding to help inform their choice of fund.
The bill also introduces a general prohibition on superannuation product advertising during employee onboarding, with the exception of an employee’s stapled fund, the employer’s default fund or a MySuper product that meets the relevant criteria.
The Super Members Council said the reforms would better safeguard Australians from conflicted sales practices on employee onboarding platforms and support the implementation of the payday super reforms.
"Earlier access to stapled information benefits both employers and workers. Employers can build stapled‑fund checks into onboarding workflows supporting both timely SG payments under payday super and correct allocation to the existing account," the association said.
"This reform will reduce the number of unintended duplicate super accounts by making it easier for employees to bring their chosen stapled fund across to their new job."
However, the SMC stressed the importance of the ATO being appropriately resourced to uplift its systems and processes for identifying and returning stapled fund information.
"Feedback received by SMC indicates that the ATO portal may experience challenges in processing stapled fund requests at scale," it said.
"Ensuring the ATO’s technology infrastructure is fit for purpose is critical to maintaining confidence in the operation of the stapling regime and the broader objective of supporting genuine member choice in super."
Employment Hero has also previously raised concerns about the ATO's ability to process stapled fund requests, warning that as many as 1.9 million workers could face a superannuation "blackout" if the ATO lookup fails.
Employment Hero general manager of payments, superannuation and benefits, Rob Dunn, said the bill requires digital platforms to display an employee’s stapled fund before showing any other information.
"While this sounds reasonable in theory, current ATO processes and data gaps mean this lookup is estimated to fail for 55 per cent to 80 per cent of digital onboards," Dunn said.
Dunn said this means that instead of seeing a verified existing fund they already hold, they will be funnelled into an employer default account.
"This current architecture risks creating over 300,000 new duplicate accounts every year, which is the exact problem this Bill seeks to solve."
Want to see more stories from trusted news sources?Make Accountants Daily a preferred news source on Google.
Miranda Brownlee
Miranda Brownlee is the deputy editor of SMSF Adviser, which is the leading source of news, strategy and educational content for professionals working in the SMSF sector.
Since joining the team in 2014, Miranda has been responsible for breaking some of the biggest superannuation stories in Australia, and has reported extensively on technical strategy and legislative updates.
Miranda also has broad business and financial services reporting experience, having written for titles including Investor Daily, ifa and Accountants Daily.
