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The Inland Revenue is not expecting any further delays or problems with processing KiwiSaver applications despite a massive surge in those joining the scheme since the employer contribution kicked in on April 1.
Figures from Finance Minister Michael Cullen's office show more than 542,000 have now signed up to KiwiSaver. More than 20,000 joined in the first nine days of April alone.
The Government's retirement savings scheme was launched in July with the expectation that 276,000 would join within the first year.
But it exceeded all forecasts when 381,000 signed up in the first six months - an average of 2070 a day - causing massive headaches for the IRD and applicants, who had to deal with processing delays, fund mix-ups and opting-out issues.
The past couple of months has seen the numbers slow to around 46,000 a month or 1500 a day but the April 1 surge has brought it back up to over 2000 people a day, again prompting concerns that the problems will resurface.
But a spokeswoman for the IRD said it was well prepared this time.
"Inland Revenue does not see that this increase will adversely affect processing of KiwiSaver members' funds as it has improved its processes and will continue to actively monitor the situation and make appropriate changes as necessary."
She said it would be a number of weeks before it would have to start processing the first contributions from the new applicants as the money was fed through from employers.
"If they are employed, we would expect to see their first contributions over the next six weeks and subsequent months after unless they have been automatically enrolled and decided to opt out.
"For those new members who have actively chosen to join KiwiSaver and are either self employed or children, then they will have made arrangements with their scheme provider about payment of contributions."
Providers say they are also a lot better prepared this time.
Steven Giannoulis, general manager of marketing and client services at ING, which has around 20 per cent of all KiwiSavers signed up, said the surge hadn't caused any extra strains as it had been expected. "We were expecting this one. We could see this was going to happen."
Initially providers just have to register that a person has signed up and ensure their details are correct - they don't receive any contributions until after three months.
Mr Giannoulis said it was now easier to sort out issues as ING and the IRD had experience with any problems and knew better how to fix them.
