HESTA Super - limited service period

This blog post I wrote is just to raise awareness of what is happening in the superannuation provider space with HESTA. Like a lot of low-cost industry funds, they utilise outsource providers to keep costs down to provide savings to members. In this case they are currently using a company called MUFG and are now moving to a company called GROW Inc to do a lot of their administration.

This move and change will see a limited service period that has started mid April 2025 and is expected to finalise at the start of June 2025. Off the top of my head (so don’t quote me), since I have been in the industry over 8 years, I don’t recall a super fund every having such a large, limited service period (except for when a merge of 2 super funds have taken place). This however isn’t a merger, rather just a change in who does their back end work.

During this time, members and financial advisers like myself are unable to have online access to view current account details including things like balances of accounts or to check if contributions have been applied correctly in an account.

There are a few things that still to me seem a little bit hard to understand, for example if you would like to make investment changes – it is a bit unclear of how these will be processed during the limited service period. Additionally, if you are over age 65 and usually have full access to your superannuation, at the moment you can’t (unless you are terminally ill) access more than 80% of your superannuation and even to access some, there has to be some “urgency” behind it as mentioned on their website.

This article isn’t supposed to put a negative spin on HESTA, rather it’s just highlighting some of the difficulties some members are facing at the moment and just like we have seen security breaches in the last month with some super funds – it is just another complexity of the online world we live in at the moment.

Please refer to their website here for further details.