New SDA Data in the Quarterly Report

The latest quarterly report (Year 6, Quarter 3) has some extremely useful new data for SDA and SIL providers. You can find it in Appendix O of the report, which you can find on page 317 here. This is a great continuation of the trend of the NDIA providing more supply and demand data to assist the SDA market to develop.

Here are some of the key points (data is correct up to 31 March 2018):

• SDA is one of the fastest growing provider registration groups. This quarter, the number of active providers grew from 118 to 140.  There are also 752 inactive registered providers.
• 12,356 Participants now have SDA payments in their Plans. This is an increase of 1,381 in the quarter. Between the 1st and 2nd quarters this financial year, there was an increase of 1,439 people. So there has not yet been acceleration of SDA approvals that we were promised. But given the Disability Reform Council (DRC) recommendations only came out in February, this does not raise any alarm bells. It will take a few months for the reforms to be fully determined and implemented.
• This quarter, the total financial commitment for SDA has grown from $112M (31 December 2018) to $127M. This equates, on average, to around $10,800 for each of the 1,381 people approved this quarter. This figure reflects the fact that most of the people approved this quarter were transitioning within existing stock.
•  This quarter, 2,449 people were approved to have SIL payments in their Plan, meaning there are now a total of 19,329 Participants approved for SIL. There is now $5.254 billion (yes, billion!) committed to SIL funding, having jumped by $807M in just the last 3 months. This equates, on average, to the relatively large amount of $329,500 in SIL funding for each new person.
• There are now 2,896 registered dwellings, after an additional 303 new dwelling registrations this quarter.

The NDIA has still not provided us with the magic data around ‘SDA approved Participants by category by region.’ This would give providers a direct indication of where the SDA demand is located, and for what dwelling types. However, we do now have some additional data around the maximum number of residents in dwellings by SA4 regions. Below is an illustration of how this data can be analysed, using the example of the Illawarra Region. Get comfortable, because this is about to get pretty technical!

Table O.3 provides the ‘Number of Enrolled SDA Dwellings by Location and Type’ and for Illawara the numbers are:

• 33 Existing
• 1 Legacy
• 7 New Builds

Table O.4 provides the ‘Number of Enrolled SDA Dwellings by Location and Design’ and for Illawara the numbers are:

• 33 Basic
• 8 Improved Liveability

From this data, we can conclude that all of the 33 existing properties are in the ‘Basic’ category, and the 7 new properties are all ‘Improved Liveability.’ This highlights a potential opportunity for providers to deliver ‘Fully Accessible’, ‘High Physical Support’, and ‘Robust’ SDA properties in this region.

From there, new data presented in Table O.5 provides the ‘Number of Enrolled SDA Dwellings by Location and Maximum’ number of residents. For Illawara the details are:

• 3 Properties are registered that can accommodate 1 resident
• 1 Property is registered that can accommodate 2 residents
• 3 Properties are registered that can accommodate 3 residents
• 8 Properties are registered that can accommodate 4 residents
• 25 Properties are registered that can accommodate 5 residents, and
• 1 Property is registered that can accommodate 6+ residents
• Total of 150 (assuming 6+ is only 6 in total)

Making some reasonable assumptions, this data suggests that the 4 and 5 bed settings may be the existing basic stock (33 in total), while the smaller 1, 2 and 3 resident settings are the new stock (7 in total). Interestingly, Table O.6 provides ‘New Build/New Build (Refurbished) Dwelling by Design Category’ which lists 7 in the ‘Improved Liveability’ category for Illawara. So the 7 new dwellings are in fact refurbishments. 

Finally, Table O.1 provides data on ‘Active participants with SDA and SIL funding in current NDIS plan.’ In Illawara, the data says 297 people have SDA approved in their Plan and 405 people have SIL. From the data above, we can see that there are currently about 150 registered SDA places in the region. This leaves a shortfall of close to 150 new SDA places!!  

So with just a little analysis, we can use the quarterly reports to work out what SDA opportunities exist in the region.  For SDA providers and investors, data like this is priceless.