The $30 billion Vision Super has refuted claims that it will not work with financial advice firms that employ offshore staff, but says it will only provide information to advice staff located within Australia, after an adviser complained about the fund’s processes.
A financial adviser claimed on LinkedIn last week Vision said it would no longer provide any information to offshore staff and was told that calls from “non-Australian accents” would be deemed as coming from offshore, unless proved otherwise.
Professional Planner understands Vision Super has received a formal complaint.
The fund told Professional Planner it has no policy against working with advice firms that use offshore staff, but there is policy in place that member data will only be given to onshore operators in those firms.
The fund strongly disputed a the claim that it was refusing to provide information to callers based on their accent, noting Australia is a multi-cultural country with residents from diverse backgrounds.
“Of course we don’t assume that an accent means someone is not Australian – many Australians have accents, including members of our own call centre team, and more broadly many of our staff group,” a spokesperson for Vision Super said.
“It’s our policy to ask every person calling as a third-party authority whether they are calling from onshore or offshore, and never to assume either way. If the caller confirms they are calling from offshore, we request that a member of their onshore team contact us to complete the account rundown.”
Former Minister for Financial Services Stephen Jones declared a “war on scams” in July 2024, putting funds under pressure to protect member money.
Then, in April this year, several industry funds along with Insignia Financial were hit with cyber breaches believed to be through brute force attacks on member logins, further ramping up scrutiny on funds’ efforts to minimise cybersecurity risk.
Vision Super said its member data protection policy, as it relates to sending personal information offshore, follows what is required under legislation in the Australian Privacy Act 1988.
“The Australian government has warned that scams targeting Australians are ‘increasingly sophisticated and organised’, and we are dealing with personal information including financial data that would be very valuable to cybercriminals,” the spokesperson said.
The fund said most callers are honest in their responses, but confirmed there have been ongoing incidents where individuals offshore have lied about their location and their identity.
“If a team member in our call centre suspects the caller is not being truthful, we follow up and verify,” the spokesperson said.
“For example, last week we had an adviser call who claimed they were onshore. However, when the manager of our call centre contacted the third-party authority’s Australian office, they advised the person who had called was actually a member of their offshore team in the Philippines.”
In another recent incident, the fund said a team member spoke to an adviser who identified herself using the name of the Australian third-party authority on the account. To validate her identity, the fund contacted the firm’s onshore office, where the call was answered by the individual the offshore team member was impersonating.
“When our team member questioned the offshore caller about the discrepancy, she immediately hung up,” the spokesperson said. “These behaviours are misleading and ethically concerning.”
The fund said there are a few indicators used to help recognise if a caller is offshore, including poor quality phone lines, background noise (particularly traffic noise) that would not be typical in an Australian office, as well as phone details not matching.
“To verify, we will ask the caller for their phone number and address, which if they are not onshore often results in a delay while they look up the details,” the spokesperson said.
“Other steps we take are reviewing the third-party adviser’s privacy policy to verify whether it states that offshore data centres are used for data collection. We then follow up with the Australian office to verify the caller’s details.”
