Cutting out the middle man in currency transfers is efficient. The fact that "clearing houses" exist (in particular when it comes to the Australian Superannuation scheme is an absolute farce.

First, the Australian government mandate that at a minimum, 9.5% of your salary is bad into a "superfund". One would think that the majority of workers would recieve this "benefit" at the same cadence as their regular pay packet.

There's a loop hole in the regulation that dictates the funds only need to be paid quarterly.

So instead, what happens is:

Employer -> Clearing House -> 3 Months of no benefit to the employee -> Employee's Benefit fund.

What should happen, on every ethical basis...

Employer -> Employee's Benefit Fund.

Bit of an off-topic rant - but there's entire industries that need to collapse because they create zero value, create a "false economy" of "well, we need this industry, they do x" instead of asking the true question of "is this industry really needed at all?"

In my example above, there's no value added except to the clearing house owners, and the employers, who probably get paid by the clearing house to settle the transactions when they're meant to.

It annoys the crap out of me.