C06/2011 March 2011 Global Refresh of Managed Investments and Shares

Amends DI No.

N/A

Replaces DI No.

N/A

Purpose of Instruction

This Departmental Instruction is to provide you with information about the processing arrangements for the March 2011 Global Refresh of Managed Investments (MIs) and Shares (SHs) advice letter production and mailout.

Introduction

Each quarter the Department varies pensions and allowances in accordance with provisions contained in the Veterans' Entitlements Act 1986 (Statutory Increase or 'SI').  In March and September of each year, the movements in the Cost of Living Index and the Global Refresh of Managed Investments (MIs) and Shares (SHs) data are usually combined as one quarterly reassess — ment process.

This quarter the Department will be sending advice letters to those pensioners on less than the maximum rate of service pension (SP), income support supplement (ISS) or age pension (AP) who have MIs and/or SHs recorded in their assessment and who are affected by the Global Refresh of MIs and/or SHs reassessment.

Advice letters will also be sent to some AP recipients who are eligible to commence payment of DFISA, or whose DFISA payment is cancelled following the processing run.

AP recipients whose D — efence F — orce I — ncome S — upport A — llowance (DFISA) payment has increased or reduced will only receive an advice following the SI and Global Refresh processing if they have MIs and/or SHs in their assessment.

This Departmental Instruction provides information about the advice letter production and mailout for this processing exercise and advises of any significant i — ssues relating to the mailout.

Significant Issues

Issues of significance with regard to this mailout are as follows:

•   The asset value of MI and SH data will be reassessed, except for clients in bereavement period;
•   An advice will only be produced if:

• there is MI and/or SH in the assessment; and
• the income support pension is payable at less than the maximum rate (or if it changed from less than maximum to maximum rate because of the reassessment);

•   Other conditions that may generate an advice include:

• when there is a change to treatment entitlement, regardless of whether the client has any MI and/or SH in the assessment; or
• when a DFISA payment is granted or cancelled, regardless of whether there is any MI and/or SH in the assessment; or
• pension has been reduced to nil after reassessment;

•   Changes to paragraph wording:

• simplification of the MI/SH paragraph
• pensioners in residential aged care

•   Lodgement of Advices with Australia Post will be staggered to commence on Thursday, 10 March and completed by COB Friday, 11 March 2011.

Target Audience of Advice Letter

A letter will be produced for the following clients following the March 2011 Global Refresh of MIs and/or SHs processing:

•   All less than maximum rate SP/ISS/AP recipients including those in receipt of DFISA, who have MIs and/or SHs recorded in their assessment;
•   Maximum rate SP/ISS/AP recipients who have MIs and/or SHs in their assessment who move to less than the maximum rate as a result of the reassessment;
•   Less than maximum rate SP/ISS/AP recipients who have MIs and/or SHs in their assessment and who move to the maximum rate as a result of the reassessment;
•   SP/ISS/AP recipients who have MIs and/or SHs in their assessment and are reduced to nil as a result o — f the reassessment;
•   All AP recipients who commence payment of DFISA, or whose DFISA payment is cancelled will receive an advice letter, regardless of whether they have MIs and/or SHs in their assessment; and
•   Treatment changes as a result of the Statutory Increase (SI) or global refresh of MIs and/or SHs reassessment.

Defence Force Income Support Allowance (DFISA)

All AP clients with or without DFISA in payment, who are paid at less than the maximum rate of pension and, who have MIs and/or SHs in their assessment will receive an advice letter following the Global Refresh processing.

In addition, an advice will be produced for those clients who commence payment of DFISA or whose DFISA payment is cancelled following the March processing regardless of whether they have MIs and/or SHs in their assessment.

An example of the advice letters to clients with MIs and/or SHs and in payment of DFISA is shown at ATTACHMENT A.

Introductory Paragraphs for SP/ISS/AP Client's Advices

AP clients in receipt of DFISA will have 'multiple outcome' paragraphs print — ed as part of their introductory paragraphs – advising them of a variation to their AP payment and DFISA payment.

All AP/SP/ISS client letters will have either the single or multiple outcome introductory paragraphs print — ed, advising them of the outcome of their payments, as follows:

Multiple Outcome Paragraphs:

This is to advise you that your:

• age pension has been increased/reduced/reduced to nil.
• Defence Force Income Support Supplement (DFISA) has varied/reduced to nil.
• rent assistance has been granted/increased/reduced/cancelled.

This change will take effect from 20 March 2011.

Single Outcome Paragraph:

This is to advise you that your service pension has been increased/reduced/reduced to nil.  This change will take effect from 20 March 2011.

Simplification of MI/SH paragraph

As part of the o — ngoing review to simplify and standardise the paragraphs used in the daily, quarterly and batch advice letters, the following changes to the wording of the “Change to Value of Shares and/or Managed Investments” paragraph in March and September quarterly advice letters will be implemented from this March SI.

•   The generic term 'pensions' will replace specific pension types.
•   'variation' will replace any reference to pension increase or reduction.  'varied to nil' will continue to be used for cases that are reduced to nil.
•   Additional text about other income and assets not being changed when deeming rates remain the sam — e will continue to be provided.

Financial Assets Reassess-ment

The asset value of MI and/or SH data will be reassessed as part of this process — ing run.  Clients with MI and/or SH data recorded in their assessment will receive a paragraph advising them of the 'Change to Value of Shares and/or Managed Investments'.

This paragraph advises clients about the reassessment program and explains that:

'The asset value of your shares which are listed on the Australian Stock Exchange and/or unit based managed investments has been reassessed.  The adjusted value of these investments has been used to work out your pension and has resulted in a variation to the amount of pension paid to you.'

OR

'has resulted in your pension being varied to nil.'

Managed Investments and/or Shares Information Attachment

All less than maximum rate income support recipients with MIs and/or SHs recorded in their assessment will receive a complete listing of all their MIs and/or SHs regardless of which MIs and/or SHs have been reassessed.

We will not be providing clients with a listing of their Full Income and Assets.

Change to Pension due to Indexation increases

All letters will continue to have the paragraph advising that 'Your pension has been adjusted in line with increases in the cost of living or wages where applicable.'

Information on indexation adjustments and pension increase will also be included in the March edition of Vetaffairs, which is to be distributed from Monday, 21 March 2011.

Obligations

to be Suppressed

Full and Partial obligations are to be suppressed for all letters produced.  Reference will be made to previous obligations issued to clients and in the case of SP and ISS recipients, reference will also be made to obligations provided in the 'You and Your Pension' Booklet.

The Financial Obligations paragraph (including the Prescribed Rates), will be present in the advice for all clients excluding SP and ISS pensioners who are reduced to nil.

AP clients who are reduced to nil, but continue in payment of DFISA will receive their Financial Obligations paragraph including their prescribed rates.

Aged Care Residents – Change to paragraphs

Clients who reside in residential aged care are subject to a range of fees that relate to their financial circumstances.  Changes to their pension payments can have an effect on the amount of fees that they may be required to pay.

The wording of the paragraphs relating to clients in residential aged care have been changed to clearly articulate the relationship between the rate of pension and the amount of aged care fee paid.

The new paragraphs will apply to Daily, Quarterly and Batch advice letters.

Old Paragraph

New Paragraph

Blind Pensioner

Residential Aged Care Fees

Please advise the Department of Veterans' Affairs if there are any changes to your income or personal circumstances.  The Department of Veterans' Affairs will then advise the Department of Health and Ageing of any changes that may affect the amount of residential care fee you pay.

Residential Aged Care Fees

Please advise the Department of Veterans' Affairs if there are any changes to your income or personal circumstances.  These changes may affect the amount of residential care fee you pay.

Non-Blind Pensioner

Residential Aged Care Fees

The Department of Veterans' Affairs will advise the Department of Health and Ageing of changes to your income that may affect the amount of residential care fee you pay.

Residential Aged Care Fees

If you reside in a Government funded aged care facility, your pension and other income may impact on the aged care fees that you can be asked to pay.  The basic daily fee is indexed on 20 March and 20 September each year in line with the indexation increases to the age pension.  The Department of Health and Ageing will inform you if your income-tested fees change, or are affected.

Treatment Advices to be Checked

For the March 2011 Global Refresh the Enclosure (treatment) advice letter will be printed at the nominated printer at each location.

It is suggested that these letters be checked for accuracy, and reconciled against the reports received in each location to ensure they reflect the correct treatment paragraphs.  It should be noted that not all clients who have an advice produced due to a treatment change will have MIs and/or SHs in their assessment.  Clients who do not have MIs and/or SHs in the assessment will not have MIs and/or SHs related paragraphs printing in their advice.

Tasmanian Clients with Overseas Postal Address

Advice letters for Tasmanian Office clients with an overseas postal address will have their advices printed and posted directly from the Mailing House.

Blind Clients will not receive an advice

Blind clients will not receive an advice.  Where a member of a couple is assessed as 'blind' – a single advice will be produced for the non-blind member who may be affected by the processing.

An exception to this rule is where a Blind client with MIs and/or SHs in their assessment is also in payment of rent assistance (RA), which is subject to the income and assets tests and as such, may result in a variation to their RA payment.  Where there is a variation to the RA payment for these clients, an advice will be produced.

General Information Sheet

The General Information Sheet (GIS) will not be produced as part of each client's let — ter for the March processing.

For information, the GIS will only be produced in the following circumstances:

•   as part of the annual end of financial year (June) mailout
•   as part of an income support pension new grant advice
•   as part of a daily advice when a client is switched over from transitional to non-transitional assessment

Pensioners who reside overseas permanently will not be given the GIS to avoid confusion, because some components of the pension supplement listed (PS non-taxable and PS flexible) are not payable to overseas pensioners.

Single & Joint Addressed Letters

All service pension and income support supplement recipient couples will receive a joint advice, provided pensioner addresses are identical; this includes illness separated couples.  The batch address defaults determining single and joint advices have been aligned with the PIPS PC daily advice defaults.  Where both members of a couple have the sam — e postal address recorded, a joint advice will be produced.

Important to note:Staff are reminded when granting Aged Pension or for those clients in a joint assessment who request separate or single advices, they need to update this information using the mainframe PRODIMS – Client Correspondence Client Options (CO.CO) Screen – prior to the processing run to initiate the client request.  The advice default requests set in CO.CO will override the DOCGEN and PIPS advice rules.

Age pensioner couples will receive separate letters – providing the advice default request has been set in CO.CO.

SI Processing

SI Processing is scheduled to run from PM Friday, 4 March 2011, following the completion of the IPS FORT processing, through until approximately PM Sunday, 6 March 2011.

Critical Dates

Processing Weekend within DVA (includes 'advices' processing)

Friday (pm) 4 March 2011– Sunday (pm) 6 March 2011

Transmission of Production Data to Mailing House

Sunday, 6 March 2011

Mailing House to commence printing Advice Letters

Monday, 7 March 2011

Mailing House to commence lodgement of Advice Letters with Australia Post

Thursday, 10 March 2011

Mailing House to complete lodgement of all  Advice Letters with Australia Post by COB

Friday, 11 March 2011

Expected Client Numbers

The number of letters to be sent nationally is approximately 29,000 based on September 2010 mailout statistics (the last comparable exercise).  For reference, the number of mailpacks generated for each location in the September 2010 mailout are listed below:

STATE

NUMBER OF ADVICE LETTERS

NSW (and ACT)

9,105

VIC

6,954

QLD

6,759

SA

2,661

WA

2,780

TAS

980

TAS OVERSEAS

55

TOTAL

29,294

Printing of Letters

SALMAT BusinessForce located in Ravenhall, Victoria, will print, fold and insert advice letters from Monday, 7 March 2011 through until Friday, 11 March 2011.

National Lodgement of Letters

Letters will be lodged nationally commencing from Thursday, 10 March to be completed by COB Friday, 11 March 2011 with Australia Post.

A representative from the Cards and Advices Team (Income Support) will notify and confirm all lodgement details.

The Income Support contact officers for this exercise will be given progress reports and advised of any changes to this timetable.

DFISA Advices from Centrelink Processing

DVA will be suppressing all Centrelink daily DFISA variation advices with an effective date of 20 March 2011, which are transmitted to DVA following the Centrelink processing run.  All other advices will print as part of the normal processing, including Centrelink DFISA cancellation and grant advices.

Foreign Pension Refresh Program known as GROOVER

The foreign pension refresh program referred to as 'GROOVER' (Global Refresh Of Overseas Exchange Rates) is a separate processing exercise to the March 2011 Global Refresh processing and is tentatively scheduled to run on the evening of Wednesday, 9 March 2011 – after the March Global Refresh processing. The effective date of the Foreign Pensions Refresh Run is 20 March 2011 for payday 24 March 2011.

Separate Foreign Income advices are produced for clients who have foreign income, and whose pensions have been varied because of the GROOVER run.

Please note that British Social Security Pension (type 08), British Official Public Service/Forces pension (type 09) and British Other Income (type 07) are not included in the GROOVER update.  Instead they are regularly updated in British Pensions exchange rate variation exercises (commonly known as BRI runs) whenever the pound Sterling exchange rate varies by more than 2.5%.

Advice letters produced by the GROOVER processing run will be printed at nominated printers (see item below) at each location.

These letters should be checked for accuracy, reconciled against the advice schedule reports, and held pending notification of the successful lodgement of the March quarterly advices.  This will ensure that pensioners receive their advice letters in chronological order.

Enclosure (Treatment Changes) Advice Letters

All reduction to nil and enclosure (treatment, student child changes) advice letters are to be printed at state office printers listed below:

SA

S116P

TAS

T003P

WA

W010P

VIC

V011P

NSW

N607P

QLD

Q403P

These advices should be checked for accuracy, and reconciled against the reports received by each Office.

Contact Officers will receive via email a zip file containing details of all advices sent, including enclosure advices.

These advices will print at the above named printers immediately following the processing and should be available by start of business on Monday, 7 March 2011.

ZIP Files of Advice Schedule Reports

A Zip File listing details of all clients who receive an advice will be emailed to the Contact Officers during the week following the processing run.  The Zip File replaces the Advices Schedule Report, which is too large to print o — n the printers in each office.

Reduction to Nil Letters

Any Reduction to Nil advice letters resulting from the March processing will be printed at your location at the nominated printer.  Staff are required to include a Commonwealth Seniors Health Card (CSHC) claim form, a CSHC fact sheet and an envelope for clients to return the complet — ed form in.

MOA 15 or MOA 16 Cases - An advice to be produced

Clients who have MIs and/or SHs in their assessment and are paid War Widows Pension (WWP) and rent a — ssistance but whose ISS or SP is paid at the nil rate will receive an advice letter advising them if their RA has varied following the Global Refresh.

Reprints of Advices Available using VIEW – Advices Tab

Reprints of individual advice letters produced from the quarterly processing can be requested via VIEW – Advices Tab reprint facility.  Quarterly advice reprints are available and can be requested from day one of the next quarter i.e., March quarterly advices from 01/04/YYYY, June quarterly advices from 01/07/YYYY and September quarterly advices from 01/10/YYYY.

'HELD' Advices to be Forced

As part of the Batch processing run any advices in 'Held' status will be forced to print.  Forced held advices will print at each respective Office's nominated printer as part of the production processing.

Please ensure your designated printer is fully operational during the processing period.  These advices will need to be checked to ensure the information in them is correct prior to posting.

Holding of daily advice letters

Daily advice letters produced after the processing run on the weekend of 4 - 6 March 2011 should be held pending notification that the March 2011 quarterly letters have been dispatched.  This will ensure that pensioners receive their advice letters in chronological order.

Income Support  Contact Officers

A contact person from each State is required to act as a liaison point for the Cards and Advices Team and is to be the responsible person for distributing any information regarding the March 2011 Global Refresh mailout to staff.

The Income Support (IS) contacts for the March 2011 quarterly processing exercise are listed below:

NSW

Peter Rajaratnam

VIC

Arthur Morihovitis

QLD

Stephen Hamill

SA

Maria Nasilowski

WA

Michelle Pauly

TAS

Bryon Kelly

ACTION:  Please advise any change of State Contacts to Anissa Lam or Vasu Sarpeshkar.

Feedback from Staff

Any concerns regarding letters produced as part of this run should be directed to Anissa Lam, the March Global Refresh Project Officer located in New South Wales.  Please forward your feedback to Anissa, stating the nature of the query together with any relevant information.  Every effort will be made to develop solutions to address any concerns raised.  Please ensure that problems are reported as early as possible.

Contact Details

Any queries regarding this mailout should be referred to:

Anissa Lamanissa.lam@dva.gov.au

(02) 9213 7169

or speed dial 27169

Advice Samples

Details of the proposed content of the letters are included in Attachment A.

Attachment A – Paragraph sequencing and Advice Letter Examples:

Example 1A: SP Increase - Less than Maximum rate remaining on Less than Maximum rate, with MIs/SHs in assessment in approved residential aged care

Example 2A: ISS Increase remaining on Less than Maximum rate, with MIs/SHs in assessment, RA in payment.

Example 3A: SP Reduction to Nil, with MIs and/or SHs in assessment, RA cancelled.

Example 4A: Age Pension Increase, DFISA varied, with MIs and/or SHs in assessment.

Letter Variables

Please note, in the enclosed examples:

•   Letterhead, DC name and signature block will change according to State.
•   The words “service pension”, “age pension” and “income support supplement” each represent variables which will appear for those clients in receipt of the applicable pension; and
•   The introductory paragraphs will advise clients of the outcome of their re-assessment, being either increased, reduced or reduced to nil.

GPO Box 9998, Brisbane  QLD  4001

Description

No. of Shares

Asset Amount

XXXXXX

X,XXX

$XX,XXX.XX

QQQQQQQQQQQQQ

XXX

$    X,XXX.XX

Description

Units

Asset Amount

VVVVVVVVVV

XX

$XX.XX

CCCCCCCCCCCCC

XXX

$XX.XX

GPO Box 9998, Brisbane  QLD  4001

GPO Box 9998, Brisbane  QLD  4001

GPO Box 9998, Brisbane  QLD  4001