C03/2014 March 2014 Global Refresh of Managed Investments, Shares and Overseas Exchange Rates - Letter Production and Mailouts

Replaces DI No.

N/A

Purpose of Instruction

This Departmental Instruction is to provide you with information about

the processing arrangements for:

1. March 2014 Global Refresh of Managed Investments (MIs) and Shares (SHs) advice letter production and mailout.

2. March 2014 Global Refresh Of Overseas Exchange Rates (referred to as GROOVER) 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 Cost of Living Index and the Global Refresh of Managed Investments (MIs) and Shares (SHs) data are usually combined as one quarterly reassessment process.

This quarter the Department will be sending advice letters to 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 AP recipients who commence receiving Defence Force Income Support Allowance (DFISA), or whose DFISA payment is cancelled following the processing run.

AP recipients whose 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 process, and provides information on significant issues 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 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;

• Advices will be lodged with Australia Post in equal volumes over two days, Friday 21 March and Monday 24 March 2014.

Advice Letter Target Audience

A letter will be produced for the following clients after the March 2014 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 with MIs and/or SHs in their assessment who move to less than the maximum rate;
• Less than maximum rate SP/ISS/AP recipients with MIs and/or SHs in their assessment who move to the maximum rate;
• SP/ISS/AP recipients who have MIs and/or SHs in their assessment and are reduced to nil;
• War widows or widowers with MIs and/or SHs in their assessment, whose ISS or SP are paid at the nil rate but rent assistance (RA) have varied;
• All AP recipients who commence payment of DFISA, or whose DFISA payment is cancelled, 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.

Introductory Paragraphs

All letters will have either a single outcome paragraph or a multiple outcome paragraph made up of dot points to advise the pension outcome.  Examples are:

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 2014.

Multiple Outcome Paragraphs:

This is to advise you that your:

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

This change will take effect from 20 March 2014.

Financial Assets Reassess-ment

The asset value of MI and/or SH data will be reassessed as part of this process.  Clients with MI and/or SHs 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 payment 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 will receive a full listing of all their MIs and/or SHs regardless of which MIs and/or SHs have been reassessed.

Clients will not be issued with a full listing of their 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 provided in the March edition of Vetaffairs, which is to be distributed from Friday 21 March 2014.

Obligations

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

A Financial Obligations paragraph (including the Prescribed Rates), will be present in the advice for all clients, except for pensioners who are reduced to nil.

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

Right of Review

A right of review paragraph will be included in all letters.

No MI and SH Refresh for Bereavement Period cases

Pensioners currently in a bereavement period will not have their MI and/or SH values refreshed in this SI run.  The batch processing will only apply the statutory increase to their pension rates.

A full MI/SH data refresh should be done as part of their post-bereavement review.

Treatment Advices to be Checked

The Enclosure (treatment) advice letters will be printed at the nominated printer at each location.

These letters should be checked for accuracy, and reconciled against the reports received in each location to ensure they reflect the correct treatment paragraphs before they are mailed to the clients.  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 in their advice.

Tasmanian Overseas Clients' Advices

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

No Advices for Blind Clients

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 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 letter 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 (PS non-taxable and PS flexible) are not payable to overseas pensioners.

Single & Joint Addressed Letters

All SP and ISS recipient couples will receive a joint advice, provided the pensioner addresses are identical.  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.  This includes illness separated couples.

AP couples will receive separate letters.

Important to note: Staff are reminded when granting AP or when clients in a joint assessment request separate advices, this information can be recorded in mainframe PRODIMS - Client Correspondence Client Options (CO.CO) Screen.  The advice default requests set in CO.CO will override DOCGEN and PIPS advice rules.

SI Processing

SI Processing will commence on Friday night, 7 March 2014, following the completion of the IPS FORT processing, and will run through until Sunday 9 March 2014.

Critical Dates

Processing within DVA (includes 'advices' processing)

Friday (9 pm) 7 March to Sunday 9 March 2014

Transmission of Production Data to Mailing House

Monday 10 March 2014

Mailing House to commence lodgement of Advice Letters with Australia Post

Friday, 21 March 2014

Mailing House to complete lodgment of all  Advice Letters by COB

Monday, 24 March 2014

Expected Client Numbers

The number of letters to be sent nationally is approximately 24,000 based on September 2013 SI mailout statistics (the last comparable exercise).  For reference, the number of mailpacks generated for each location in the September 2013 SI mailout are listed below:

STATE

NUMBER OF ADVICE LETTERS

NSW & ACT

7,417

VIC

5,641

QLD

5,842

SA & NT

2,119

WA

2,333

TAS

   793

TAS OVERSEAS

      59

TOTAL

24,204

Printing of Letters

Computershare Communication Services located in Ermington NSW will print, fold, insert and lodge the advice letters.

National Lodgement of Letters

Letters will be lodged nationally with Australia Post on Friday 21 March and be completed by Monday 24 March 2014.

A representative from the Cards and Advices Team will notify and confirm all lodgment details.

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

Holding of daily advice letters

Daily advice letters produced from Monday 10 March 2014 should be held pending notification that the March 2014 quarterly letters have been dispatched.  This will ensure that pensioners receive their advice letters in chronological order.

DFISA Advices from Centrelink Processing

DVA will be suppressing all Centrelink daily DFISA variation advices with an effective date of 20 March 2014, 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 2014 Global Refresh processing and is scheduled to run on the evening of Wednesday, 12 March 2014. The effective date of the Foreign Pensions Refresh Run is 20 March 2014 for payday 3 April 2014.

Separate Foreign Income advices are produced for clients who have foreign income, and whose pensions have been varied because of the GROOVER run.  A sample GROOVER advice can be found at Attachment B.

About 700 GROOVER advices are expected.  These advices will be printed at nominated printer of each location.

A small number of streamed advices also will be printed at nominated printers 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.

Please note:  the 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 2.5% or more.

Streamed Advices

Several categories of advices are streamed out to print at location printers, as they require additional checking and manual actions.

The following advice types are streamed:

• Enclosure (treatment eligibility or student child change);
• Overseas postal address (except Tasmanian clients);
• Reduction to nil.

They are to be printed at state office printers listed below:

SA

VSSOPR06

TAS

VTSOPR03

WA

VWSOPR01

VIC

VVSOPR02

NSW

N607P

QLD

VQSOPR01

These advices, in particular treatment eligibility change advices, should be checked for accuracy, and reconciled against the reports received by each Office.

Reduction to Nil advice letters also require inclusion of Commonwealth Seniors Health Card (CSHC) claim forms, CSHC fact sheets and reply paid envelopes to the mailpacks.

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 following the processing run.  The Zip File replaces the Advices Schedule Report, which is too large to print on the printers in each office.

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 ie., 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

Prior to the SI Batch processing run, any advices in 'Held' status will be forced to print to each location nominated printer.

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.

Income Support  Contact Officers

A contact person from each location 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 2014 Global Refresh mailout to staff.

The Income Support (IS) contacts for the March 2014 quarterly processing exercise are listed below:

NSW:Genia Sacharczuk

VIC:Greg Heitsch

QLD:Stephen Hamill

SA:Maria Nasilowski

WA:Michelle Pauly / Margarete Mumme

TAS:Daimeon Horne

Cards & Advices Team Contact Details

Any queries regarding this mailout should be referred to:

Ganes Jagadeeswaran

(02) 9213 7310 or speed dial 27310

ganes.jagadeeswaran@dva.gov.au

Advice Samples

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

• Example 1A: SP Increase, with MIs/SHs in assessment.
• Example 2A: Age Pension Increase, DFISA varied, with MIs and/or SHs in assessment.
• Example 3A: SP Reduction to Nil, RA cancelled, with MIs and/or SHs in assessment.

Attachment B contains a sample of the GROOVER advice.

Letter Variables

Please note, in the enclosed examples:

• Mail Return Address, Facsimile Number, 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.
• The introductory paragraphs will advise clients of the outcome of their re-assessment, being either 'increased', 'reduced' or 'reduced to nil'. Variables such as 'increased', 'reduced', 'granted', 'commenced' or 'cancelled' may be used when referring to Income Support allowance outcomes.