Early super payments top $17bn and rising

The data, released on Monday, showed that more than $17 billion had been paid out of the super system to eligible applicants affected by COVID-19, an increase of over $1 billion since the previous week.

Super funds had received 2.4 million applications for early release by 21 June, meaning another 100,000 applications had been received over the course of the week ending 21 June.

The funds had paid out 2.3 million of these applications by this date, according to APRA data.

Average payments increased slightly over the week, from $7,468 in the week ending 14 June to $7,492 in the week ending 21 June.

Eighty-nine per cent of funds that submitted data to APRA completed more than 90 per cent of payments within five business days. The 10 funds with the highest number of applications received from the ATO have made 1.52 million payments, worth a total of $11.21 billion.

Australian Super remained the largest payer in the scheme having made $2.3 billion worth of payments since the scheme’s inception, followed by Sunsuper, which paid out $1.7 billion since inception. REST had paid out $1.56 billion, making it the third highest paying fund in the scheme.

The average time taken to pay out applications remained at 3.3 business days, while the percentage of funds paying out applications within five business days dropped slightly to 95 per cent, from 96 per cent the previous week.

APRA also noted that with the new financial year about to start, “high volumes of applications” were expected in the coming weeks as fund members became eligible for a second tranche of early release.