I was honoured to be appointed as the Public Trustee from 1 July 2024, following six years of leadership in the position by Nicolle Rantanen.

I would like to recognise Nicolle for the significant contribution that she made to the organisation including the implementation of a broad range of business reforms.

The Public Trustee’s purpose is to “protect the wishes and interests of those we serve”.  This involves providing financial and administrative services to eligible South Australians, to help those that cannot manage their own affairs and those who have trusted the organisation to assist them.

The Public Trustee Strategic Plan for 2023-26 outlines that the core objectives of the organisation are to provide a positive customer experience, improve the way our services are delivered, ensure appropriate governance and financial sustainability and that the people delivering that service are supported.

Consistent with those objectives, a major focus during 2023-24 has been a project to replace the aged and unsupported PeopleSoft Customer Financial System. This system provides the infrastructure for our customer financial transactions and accounting. Following a complex procurement process a contract was signed in September 2023 with an implementation partner to implement a Microsoft Dynamics Finance system.

The new system is internally known as “Transact” and will be a modern cloud based system that will enable some highly manual processes to be replaced with electronic workflows. The project is expected to take around 18 months to complete. Scoping, design and commencement of system customisations occurred during 2023-24.

Workforce shortages and capability gaps have been a persistent feature of the economy and have impacted the Public Trustee. Managing issues associated with recruitment, employee wellbeing, planning and training have been a challenge in 2023-24. Providing further flexibility to the workforce, increasing specialist HR support, training and development and managing workloads have been priorities in 2023-24 to assist us to meet the workforce challenges.  A number of university student placements were undertaken with benefits to both the students and the Public Trustee.

The operations of the Public Trustee have been also improved in 2023-24 by a number of initiatives including:

• From 1 July 2023 the low value estate threshold increased for Minors Trusts to $50,000. This change means that no fees are charged to trusts held on behalf of people under 18 years of age with assets of less than $50,000. Minors in these circumstances were identified as being at risk of capital erosion over time as a result of trust administration fees, combined with relatively low asset holdings and the associated low investment returns.
• The functionality of the Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system, that was implemented in 2022-23, continued to evolve including the associated management reporting. These changes will improve the efficiency and the quality of customer service. A post implementation review of the project was also undertaken to ensure that learnings from the project were identified and could be applied to future projects.
• Finalised additional ‘Easy Read’ documents designed to enable customers with intellectual disabilities to better understand key documentation including Personal Estates customer exit Information Pack, the Customer Statement Overview, and Fees and Charges documents.
• Our 2023-24 Customer Satisfaction Survey showed that customer satisfaction has improved in most areas with an increase in mean satisfaction for four-out-of-five customer groups being Personal Estates, Estate Services, Trust Services and Documents Revoked.  There was a slight decline in satisfaction for Wills Services, however Wills customers continue to be the most satisfied with services provided by the Public Trustee.
• The organisation transitioned banking arrangements from the Commonwealth Bank of Australia to the ANZ bank. Corporate banking was fully transitioned and Customer banking transitioned major receipts. The customer banking will have an additional implementation phase for customer payments when the new Transact customer accounting system goes live.
• Enhanced our corporate accounts payable function through the implementation of BASWARE and by utilising Shared Services SA to pay corporate accounts.
• Implemented ‘Teams’ phone technology to replace desktop phones for staff that do not regularly interact with customers. The technology improves accessibility and mobility for staff.
• To improve customer service and to ensure customer requests are visible, trackable and actioned more quickly, incoming telephone call management was changed. The new process assists to ensure that customers can speak to a person when they call and leave a message rather than a voicemail if their officer is unavailable.
• The Public Trustee continued to refresh ICT infrastructure, improve cyber security maturity and upgrade legacy systems.
• Carried out internal audit and risk management reviews regarding the implementation of the Customer Finance system project, Ransomware Incident Response Readiness, Security Vulnerability Assessment, Customer Taxation Risk Management and Customer Identity Management.

The Public Trustee received 143 public complaints during 2023-24, of which 67% were determined to have no matters to address.

The Public Trustee’s net operating result for 2023-24 was $1.95 million favourable to budget primarily due to strong returns on Corporate Investments with investment markets performing well in 2023-24.

Tony Brumfield
Public Trustee