
Centrelink unpuzzled!
03 9894 8600
PO Box 76 NUNAWADING Vic 3131
admin@pensionersolutions.com.au
www.pensionersolutions.com.au
WHO ARE WE?
Pensioner Solutions was founded by Amanda Reid in 2009 and was initially run from her home office. Over the years, we have grown our client base, outgrown the home office and a subsequent office and are now situated in Nunawading. As our client base has expanded, so has our offering to our clients and we are now a team of 3 and service clients up and down the eastern seaboard.
Amanda
Amanda has worked in financial services for the past 18 years or so, and most of that time dealing with Centrelink on behalf of her clients. She works full time in the business and apart from looking after clients from the Melbourne office, she also looks after clients on the Gold Coast, from a smaller office environment. She loves what she does and is passionate about helping clients deal with Centrelink. As we all know, this can be quite challenging from time to time. She would be the first one to tell you, that at times she feels she needs her head read for starting a business which deals directly with Centrelink, but like everything with a downside, she feels there is a much bigger upside, as she gets to meet some wonderful people, and make a difference to their lives.
Kate
Kate has been a team member since April 2015 and was Pensioner Solutions first paid employee (Amanda’s dad still does all the book work for the business, but as a love job!!). From the minute Kate joined the team, a sense of calm descended on the business. Her can-do attitude and her gentle, kind nature is a perfect fit for the business. She is one of our greatest assets. Her role has grown with her knowledge and she not only deals directly with clients and assists in ensuring they receive their entitlements from Centrelink, she works very hard behind the scenes in ensuring the day to day running of the business is on track.
Kate now works remotely from her new home on the South Coast of NSW but continues to offer the same wonderful service, not only to our clients but to the business overall. She was instrumental in setting up our internal systems in such a way that no matter where any of us are in the country (or in fact the world) we can still all work as a team and ensure our clients are all well looked after and that the business functions as normal.
Louise
Louise came on board in October 2015 to lend a hand for a project which we anticipated would last 3 days….. Needless to say, we couldn’t let her go. She has just clocked up her first anniversary with the team.
Louise liaises directly with clients and with Centrelink on behalf of our clients and has been unrelenting in her quest to ensure clients claims are finalised in a timely manner. This is not an easy task as we have had many claims that have taken months to be approved, which is a sad indictment on the situation within Centrelink. However, she follows up on a regular basis, to the point where Centrelink staff have actually thanked her for not giving up on behalf of the client.
Her manner with clients is wonderful and her understanding of their needs, frustrations and concerns allows her to keep our clients calm and happy.
So now that you have met the team, its probably a good idea to tell you what we do!!
We offer a complete advocacy service for our clients to assist them with dealing with Centrelink. We assess eligibility for Centrelink entitlements, prepare all the paperwork necessary to facilitate a claim and assist in collating all the necessary document required to support a claim.
We then lodge the claim on behalf of our clients and follow up to ensure it is paid in a timely manner and at the correct level.
As Correspondence Nominees we are able to act on behalf of the client in virtually all their dealings with Centrelink. Basically we remove the need for our clients to ever have to speak with Centrelink and in most cases, the need to ever visit a Centrelink Office.
Once a claim is lodged and finalised, we then offer an ongoing service which ensures our clients records are always up to date with Centrelink and therefore they continue to receive the correct rate of pension.
Aged Care
We also offer a service where we will assist clients and / or their children and Powers of Attorney in completing the necessary forms for Income & Assets assessment for a move to Aged Care. We find that for the majority of people facing a moved to aged care for themselves or an elderly family member is a very stressful and confusing time. We do all we can to ensure this move is as streamlined and stress free as possible. We often have clients come to us with the worry of the world on their shoulders (which is natural in these circumstances) only to say as they walk out the door, that a great weight has been lifted. This is something we love to hear and is one of our main reasons for being!