A major Western Australian government superannuation fund — responsible for retirement benefits across the state's public sector workforce and spanning six distinct schemes — made the strategic decision in 2014 to outsource its entire administration operation to a national fund administrator.
Desda contributed to the design and delivery of the Transition and Transformation (T&T) Programme that made this handover possible, working across governance, planning, and workstream coordination to support a successful Day 1 on 1 July 2014. What made this engagement unusual — and unusually complex — was that it was not a system migration at all. The administration platform stayed in place. The challenge was operational: moving an entire function, its people, its premises, and its processes from a government body to a private administrator, without interrupting services to members.
The Challenge
The Fund administered retirement benefits for Western Australian government employees across a range of scheme types — from accumulation products to defined benefit pensions — each with distinct rules, member cohorts, and operational complexity. The decision to outsource administration was a major strategic change, and it came with a hard deadline: the Operational Handover had to land on 1 July 2014, the start of the new financial year.
Unlike a typical administrator change, this transition did not involve switching administration platforms. The existing platform was staying. That removed one major source of risk — but it shifted the complexity elsewhere. The task was to transfer people, processes, governance obligations, supplier contracts, premises, and regulatory responsibilities from a state government entity to a private company, while maintaining uninterrupted service to members throughout.
- Accumulation fund (including retirement access product) — for active WA public sector employees
- Defined benefit scheme (pre-1995 employees) — closed defined benefit arrangement for long-serving government staff
- Contributory defined benefit scheme — for employees who elected into a contributory defined benefit structure
- Pension product — for members in the retirement phase drawing income streams
- Legacy pension and provident scheme — legacy defined benefit arrangements for pre-reform members
- Statutory pension schemes (in part) — covering judicial and parliamentary officers under separate legislative frameworks
Key Complexities
- A hard Day 1 of 1 July 2014 — aligned with the financial year, creating an immovable deadline with no flexibility for slippage
- Six schemes with distinct benefit structures, member cohorts, and regulatory treatment, each requiring tailored transition planning
- Full workforce transfer — the Fund's operational employees moved to the Administrator's employment as a dedicated retained Services Team, requiring HR, industrial relations, and change management workstreams to run in parallel with technical planning
- Premises complexity — the Administrator needed to sub-lease and fit out the fund's existing Perth CBD offices to maintain in-situ operations, with fit-out construction, access card separation, and sublease negotiation all on the critical path
- State government stakeholder environment — the transition involved the Fund's Board, State Treasury, unions, employers, and regulators, each with distinct communication and governance requirements
- Technology uplift alongside handover — a platform version upgrade, new member and employer web portals, and integration work were being delivered in parallel with the operational transition
- Regulatory notifications — ATO, APRA, ASIC, and AUSTRAC all required formal notification and continued reporting continuity post-handover
Our Approach
Desda contributed to the Transition and Transformation Plan — the governing document for the entire programme — which defined workstream ownership, critical path activities, Day 1 requirements, and the joint governance structure between the Fund and the Administrator. The T&T Plan was developed collaboratively with both parties and State Treasury, forming the basis of the commercial agreement between the retained Trustee function and the Administrator's services company.
The programme was structured around a joint steering committee that brought the Fund, the Administrator, and State representatives together to resolve issues, track progress, and provide escalation paths. Below the steering committee, workstream leads held day-to-day accountability for their domain, meeting weekly to track activities across the programme.
Outcomes
The Operational Handover was achieved on 1 July 2014 as planned. The Fund's operational administration transferred to the Administrator's retained Services Team without service interruption to members or employers. Staff continued working from the same Perth CBD offices under the Administrator's employment, using the same administration systems they had always used — a continuity of experience that protected both member service quality and institutional knowledge through the transition period.
- Day 1 achieved on schedule — 1 July 2014, the start of the financial year
- Zero service disruption to members across all six schemes
- Full workforce continuity — the Fund's operational team transferred to the Administrator as a dedicated retained Services Team, preserving institutional knowledge
- In-situ operations — administration continued from the same Perth CBD premises under a new sub-lease arrangement
- Platform continuity — the existing administration system was retained, avoiding the risk of a simultaneous system migration
- Regulatory obligations maintained — ATO, APRA, ASIC, and AUSTRAC reporting continued under BAU arrangements through and beyond handover
Why This Engagement Matters
This transition is a textbook example of what makes operational outsourcings so different from platform migrations — and so often underestimated. There was no data to migrate, no system to cut over, no technical go-live moment. The complexity was entirely human and organisational: aligning two organisations, a state government stakeholder, a workforce, hundreds of employers, and a regulator environment around a single hard deadline.
- The T&T Plan framework ensured every workstream had an owner, a timeline, and a clear escalation path — without it, the interdependencies between HR, premises, IT, and communications would have been unmanageable
- The joint governance structure — a steering committee meeting weekly, supported by programme-level working groups — gave both parties the visibility to resolve issues before they became critical path blockers
- The "lift and shift" approach (retain platform, retain staff, retain premises) was not the simplest path commercially, but it was the right one operationally — it kept service continuity at the centre of every decision
- Desda's contribution to the T&T Plan and programme governance reflected a deep understanding of how superannuation administration actually works — the regulatory obligations, the member communication requirements, the financial reconciliation dependencies — that generic programme management cannot replicate