People

• Increased workplace flexibility to support employee wellbeing.
• Implementation of a University Graduate Placement Program to support student outcomes and provide workplace exposure.
• Streamlining of recruitment processes to minimise vacancies, ensuring customer service levels can be met.
• Increased cross organisational staff training and development to foster a positive culture.
• Provided leadership training and development to our people leaders.

Technology enabled Business Improvement

• Commenced the project to replace the ageing Customer Financials system (PeopleSoft Financials) with MS Dynamics to improve workflows and service levels.
• Continued to evolve the recently implemented Connect Customer Relationship Management system, and the associated management reporting, to improve the efficiency and quality of customer service.
• Collaborated with AGD to relocate and decommission legacy hardware.
• Completed application upgrades for Assets and Financial Management Software HiPortfolio, HiTrust and Anova, supporting the investment of customer funds.
• Refreshed ICT infrastructure and software systems including monitors and laptops.
• Upgraded core office network infrastructure to improve reliability of connectivity.
• Continued to remove dependencies on unsupported systems.
• Completed several test exercises to ensure our operational and cyber security processes are current including a disaster recovery failover, email phishing exercises and an organisational ransomware simulation exercise.
• Implemented quarterly simulated phishing campaigns with AGD, helping to raise awareness and resilience to phishing events.

Customer Experience

Fee reform was implemented from 1 July 2023 to increase the low value estate threshold 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.

• 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.

• Increased engagement with customer advocacy and support services with a focus on improving customer service and provision of escalation points for complex queries.
• Continued the conversion of key documents to ‘Easy Read’ format for people with intellectual disabilities including the Personal Estates customer exit Information Pack, the Customer Statement Overview, and Fees and Charges documents.

• Approval of a new telephony system for implementation in early 2025 to improve telephone responsiveness and reduce reliance on voicemail.
• Continued engagement with the Adult Safeguarding Unit (ASU), the Office of the Public Advocate (OPA), the Fines Enforcement and Recovery Unit (FERU) and the South Australian Civil and Administrative Tribunal (SACAT).
• Participation in education sessions as part of the Alliance for Prevention of Elder Abuse hosted by the Aged Rights Advocacy Service.
• Conducted 2023-24 Annual Customer Satisfaction Survey.

Governance & Financial Sustainability

• Achieved Charter and Performance targets.
• Reviewed delegations for operational effectiveness.
• Investment strategies continue to perform soundly over the long term. Returns from cash investments, which make up most of customer funds, have consistently exceeded benchmark.
• Adopted digital dashboards to enhance quality assurance processes for customer services branches.
• 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.
• Updated customer services branches quality assurance procedure to streamline compliance activities.
• Conducted the 2023-24 Control Self-Assessment program across the Agency and implemented a verification of ratings process across customer services branches.
• Completed internal audits focusing on different areas across the agency, including a review of the implementation of the customer finance system project, Ransomware Incident Response Readiness, Security Vulnerability Assessment, Customer Taxation Risk Management and Customer Identity Management.
• Customer distribution entitlements for the financial year 2023-24 period were $16.2 million income and $14.4 million capital (compared to $8.0 million income and $12.9 million capital in 2022-23).   The value and composition of distributions will vary and is dependent on market performance and fund manager distribution strategies. For the period, income and capital distributions were higher than the previous corresponding period. This reflects higher interest rates this year and greater turnover this financial year.