Mick Bourke Email & Phone Number

This key role was as Senior Platform Manager responsible for the Product Stream of the Platform Consolidation Program (PCP). PCP was a very large multi-year program that transferred over 120,000 clients and their accounts and over $17B in funds under administration system from a legacy system to AMP’s flagship North Platform. PCP was initiated in 2008 by AXA Australia, prior to its merger with AMP. AMP endorsed the continuation of the program as a strategic initiative following the merger in 2011. The fundamental objective of PCP was a reduction in operating costs. For this to be achieved the system development required on the North platform had to be kept to a minimum and all transferring clients had to be transferred to an online operating model, without needing to seeking written, prior consent. I lead the Product Stream that defined the requirements for the products that were built on North for the transferring clients and defined and had approved the online operating model these clients would operate under. This was a key role in a very high profile program that required working very closely with a broad range of key stakeholders, e.g. Product, IT, Operations, Trustee, Distribution, Compliance and Legal (internal and external), each with at times conflicting requirements and expectations, to achieve the balance required to ensure the transfer could take place and achieve the operational savings required to make the program economic.Since the completion of PCP I have had key roles in the successor fund transfer of 2 superannuation funds that were administered on the Synergy Platform that transferred a further 12,000 clients and $750M in funds under administration to the North Platform and allowed the Synergy operations to be closed down resulting in operating savings of over $8m pa. I also developed a rationalisation strategy for AMP’s Off Sale Wealth Management Products.

In my various roles at AXA Australia I completed personally or lead streams within projects that completed 6 superannuation fund successor fund transfers, 2 intra fund transfers and multiple product terminations and administration data migrations. In total these would have included over 60,000 clients and their accounts representing over $8B in funds under administration. In all cases the twin objectives of the initiatives were to transfer clients to better/lower cost products/administration platforms and to reduce operating costs by rationalising the number of products and/or decommission legacy administration systems.While the fundamental legal and Trustee requirements that need to be met for a successor fund transfer to be approved are the same for each transfer, the specifics and drivers of each one are unique and can vary significantly depending on the Funds involved and the products they operate. As a consequence each successor fund transfer can have different issues arise that if not addressed and managed can ultimately lead to the transfer not taking place, either because one or both of the Trustees does not approve it (i.e. it does not convinced the proposed transfer is in the in the best interests of the members they represent), or the business funding the proposed transfer withdraws its support because the cost to implement and/or make the changes required to obtain Trustee approval (so it is in their members’ best interests) make the initiative uneconomic. Notwithstanding the various issues (e.g. tax, insurance, adviser remuneration impacts etc.) that have arisen across each of these transfers that I have been responsible for or worked on, all have been approved when put to the Trustees, successfully implemented and delivered on the business objectives.