Adviser Initiated Pension Payments

On behalf of your clients, you can initiate online lump sum withdrawals and ad hoc pension payments for eligible pension accounts only (excludes Term Allocated Pensions and Transition to Retirement pensions). These payments will be paid out to your client’s nominated account.

These will be one-off payments made independently of the existing payments your clients receive, and they will not impact those arrangements. 

To start the process, simply click the Make a payment button in your client's Account Overview on Adviser Online.

• You can initiate a single payment of up to $500,000. 
• Once you’ve initiated a payment, you'll be able to initiate another online payment after three days.
• There must be sufficient available cash in your client’s account for the payment to be made without any delays. If there isn’t enough cash available to make the payment, you’ll need to lodge asset sale orders before requesting the payment.
• As a security measure, you can only initiate payments into the bank account where we make your client’s regular pension payments. This is to ensure your client has authorised the bank account to receive the payments.

Your clients will need to approve payments over $30,000 via the print, sign and upload method. 

Please note you can make one payment every three days.
 

Submit a payment using the print, sign and upload method 

1. Log in to Adviser Online
2. Search for a client using the global search bar
3. Click Account Overview
4. Click Make a payment
5. Select the payment type and enter the payment amount
6. Download the form. You’ll need to print the from and get your client to sign it 
7. Upload the form to Request Centre.
    

View status of approvals

You can view the status and progress of payments in Request Centre.

Once the client approves the payment, you’ll receive a notification in Adviser Online. 

If you choose the lump sum withdrawal option:

• The payment will not count towards the annual minimum pension requirements
• If your client is under the age of 60, there may be different tax implications compared to their regular pension payments, and
• Your client’s transfer balance cap will be reduced by the amount of the payment.

If you choose the ad hoc pension payment option:

• The payment will count towards the annual minimum pension requirements, and
• If your client is under the age of 60, the payment will be taxed in the same manner as their other pension payments.

For clients under the age of 60, tax may apply on payments. All amounts selected will be net of any applicable tax.

In other words, the amount you choose will be the amount they receive in their bank account. This means the amount that is withdrawn from their account may be higher. 

If your client is aged 60 or over at the time of the payment, tax is not applicable.

If there is enough available cash in the account to make the payment, your clients will generally receive the funds in one to three business days. This may be impacted by your client’s financial institution. 

In some instances, the amount of available cash at the time of the request will be higher than when we attempt to make the payment. This could happen if an investment trade is placed around the time of the payment request. 

In this situation, it will take longer for your client to receive the proceeds as we’ll need to wait for cash to become available again. 

We recommend not placing any trades if you intend to initiate these payments to avoid any delays.