Superannuation Stapling

Prior to 1 November 2021 if a payee did not nominate a super fund on the Superannuation Standard Choice form (a.k.a super choice form) when they commenced employment their employer could automatically enroll the payee in the employer’s default fund.

Under the new legislation employers are no longer be able to automatically enroll a new payee in their default employer fund if the payee has not nominated a fund. Instead, the employer is required to determine if the payee already has an active fund and if so, superannuation contributions must be paid into that existing fund. This is referred to super stapling (i.e. the payee is ‘stapled’ to their fund).

If the payee does not already have an active fund, only then can the employer enroll the payee in the employer’s default fund.

To determine if a payee has an active fund an employer can do one of the following:

• perform a search manually via the ATO Business portal

• use a stapled fund bulk request process in the ATO Business portal (to be decommissioned mid 2023).

To avoid the overhead of searching for stapled funds when onboarding new payees, FastTrack recommend adopting one of the following practices:

• Onboard payees using the native FastTrack360 Payee Onboarding feature, which digitally captures payee key contact details as well as bank, tax and includes superannuation selection. You can read more about this here. Clients must get in touch with Customer Service or your Account Manager to get it enabled.

• Onboard your payees using an integrated 3^rd party digital onboarding tool that captures payees’ superannuation choice details. You can see the MarketPlace partners via our website here.

• Encourage payees to complete the paper-based Superannuation Standard Choice Form as part of their onboarding.