Link’s McMurtrie rebuts takeover consortium’s claims

Link Administration outgoing managing director, John McMurtrie has defended the company against suggestions that it has lost ground in the superannuation administration market through the loss of mandates. 

Addressing the company’s annual general meeting, McMurtrie pointed to suggestions contained in a private equity-led takeover bid that the loss of mandates had weighed on the company. 

He noted that the issues raised by the consortium included $800,000 of lost contract accounts including TWU Super, Care Super, Austsafe and Kinetic Super and reduced client accounts resulting from Protecting Your Super (PYS) and Early Release Super (ERS). 

As well, he pointed to the Government’s recently announced Budget initiative Your Future, Your Super which would see the stapling of existing super accounts to an individual member to prevent account duplication. 

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“While we recognise that these have had an impact on the financial results, I would add the following additional context, McMurtrie said. “In the past 18 months we have resigned 15 clients on long-term contracts including AustrlaianSuper, REST and HESTA.” 

“Together these clients represents approximately 6.3 million members and over 70% total annual contracted revenue earned in Australia.” 

McMurtrie said the financial impacts of PYS and ERS had been highlighted in all the company’s results presentations and were well understood. 

“By the time we enter the next financial year, we expect the majority of this immediate financial impact to be behind us. Conversely, we anticipate that the recent volume of regulatory change and increased regulatory oversight will create further opportunities for us, as we are able to offer superannuation funds a high-quality outcome underpinned by our leading technology, scale and breadth of service,” he said.