A selection of recent engagements. Client names are withheld where confidentiality applies — the numbers, the platforms, and the outcomes are real.
One of Australia's largest superannuation funds embarked on a landmark transformation to consolidate three separately operating funds — each with its own administration platform, data architecture, and operating model — into a single, unified entity. With over $100 billion in funds under management and more than one million members combined across all platforms, this represented one of the most complex and high-stakes data migrations undertaken in the Australian superannuation industry.
Desda was engaged from the outset to design and lead the data migration stream. Working across three phases over three years, our team brought deep superannuation domain expertise, technical data migration capability, and a structured delivery approach to ensure every member record was migrated accurately, completely, and with minimal disruption to the people who depend on these funds for their retirement.
A six-week project audit and quality assurance engagement initiated after a multi-year phased program had stalled with significant cost and schedule overruns, prompting the sponsor to request an independent review. The audit assessed governance, delivery performance, and risk controls, producing clear findings and actionable improvements. The steerco endorsed all recommendations and asked the Desda consultant to remain engaged and lead the program to deliver the remaining scope within a fixed timeframe and budget.
The project ultimately delivered what had been planned as a nine-month program of work in six months, transitioning a $50B+ securities-lending book onto the investment platform.
The client sought to migrate all member and client data from an ageing registry platform into Garradin while maintaining business continuity and meeting strict regulatory obligations. The legacy system had inconsistent data structures, historical anomalies, and limited documentation — all of which increased the complexity of mapping, transformation and reconciliations.
Desda wrote and executed to the data migration strategy, resulting in multiple bespoke fixed income products, with 65k investors spanning 30 years of data migrated within a fixed schedule with high quality, multi-vendor dependencies and regulator approval.
Across the largest Successor Fund Transfers and member-administration transitions in the Australian market.
A senior bench — every consultant has been doing this work long enough to recognise the failure modes.
Specialist focus on Superannuation, Trustee, and Member Administration since 2010.