Key points
- Super funds hold the keys to the future for millions of lives and are another link in the chain that binds Australia and the US. But sadly, our work across the sector has exposed its shortcomings and blind spots.
- The next phase of ASIC’s work in the superannuation sector will address how trustees learn from and respond to the complaints they receive.
- A trustee’s approach to complaints is a clear and meaningful measure of whether they’re focused on the interests of their members. Customer-centric means complaint-aware.
Check against delivery
Acknowledgement of Country
I would like to begin by acknowledging that we are on Gadigal Country. I pay my respects to Elders past and present – and I extend that respect to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people here today.
Introduction
In the past decade, Australia’s total superannuation assets have grown to more than $4.1 trillion in funds, giving super a larger market capitalisation than all companies on the ASX.[1]
This is undoubtedly an impressive achievement.
And its growth, alongside the universal nature of superannuation and its preservation until retirement, makes super a pillar of stability for the Australian economy.
But quantity isn’t everything. We must have quality too. Size and growth should not outstrip governance – nor customer service.
And it’s here that we’re seeing a great divide between what can be reasonably expected of super funds, and what is found in practice.
Superannuation is currently the subject of significant regulatory and enforcement action from both ASIC and the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority.
So today I want to address that divide head-on.
The role super plays in the economy
Let’s start with the role of super in the economy.
Australia doesn’t make it into the top 50 countries in the world when it comes to population size. We’re 55th. And yet our super industry constitutes the fourth largest retirement savings pool in the world, surpassed only by the US, the UK, and Canada. And by the next decade we’re expected to have the second largest retirement system globally.[2]
It's no surprise, then, that super is growing faster than our economy and is larger than our GDP.[3]
Our regulatory settings have contributed to the strong growth of the sector – and, more broadly, for many years super has played a role in intermediating retail investor participation in public and private markets – more about that later – and will continue to do so.
On this point, ASIC is currently looking at super and its role in the future shape of our public and private markets and what, if anything, ASIC needs to do to improve confident investor participation in those markets.
Given its size, Australia’s super system has emerged as a significant force in our local capital markets, as well as those abroad. Over the last decade super funds’ investment allocations to international public equities went from 21% to 30%, surpassing domestic public equities investment.[4]
And of course, given the size and depth of its economy, the United States is a natural destination for this capital.
Which means Australians aren’t the only beneficiaries of the super system. More and more Australian capital is behind American infrastructure projects, data centres, and energy and technology businesses. For example:
- Macquarie Asset Management, which works with 18 out of the 20 largest superannuation funds in Australia, owns the Long Beach Container Terminal in California and the Goethals Bridge linking New York and New Jersey.[5]
At the same time, this means our funds can be increasingly exposed to assets that don’t perform as expected – AustralianSuper’s recent $1.1 billion write-down in the US software company Pluralsight being one example.
But in any case, it’s clear that the super industry, given its scale and focus in both the Australian and American economies, is another link in the chain that binds our two nations closer together.
On that note - I know that questions around trade, tariffs, defence, and critical minerals may be on the minds of many in this room. As Australia’s corporate and markets regulator, ASIC of course has no direct role in relation to those issues.
However, an important part of the work we do requires close-knit international collaboration, and we have strong, enduring and mutually beneficial partnerships with US regulators – particularly the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC).
We work together – including across international forums – on common global market issues, such as scams and fraud, the use of AI, fintech innovation, and the dynamics we’re seeing between public and private markets.
We also engage regularly on supervision strategies, investigations and general enforcement approaches.
As a regulator, this collaboration is critical to ensuring strong markets and ultimately Australia and America’s prosperity.
Super trustees are failing Australians in a critical service
The size and scale of the super industry alone would put it in a position to have a unique influence on the economy – and thus the lives of everyday Australians whose money it holds. But that money is also the life savings, the retirement funds, of most of our citizenry – money entrusted to superannuation funds in good faith to be preserved for when the time comes to retire.
I’m saying that super funds hold the keys to the future for millions of lives – and so they’re trusted with all the responsibilities and obligations that go with that.
It’s all very well for the super sector to be rightly praised for the returns it generates from its investments. But the real value of those investments is what they actually represent to Australians: the hope of a comfortable, secure retirement after a lifetime of hard work –– and the promise that their money will be there when needed.
But sadly, our work across the sector has exposed its shortcomings and blind spots.
ASIC’s work has laid bare governance challenges, and exposed super trustee board blind spots around their data, systems, and processes. For example, our death benefits review found that even the fastest trustees processed less than half (48%) of their death benefit claims within three months. The slowest processed only 8% in that time.[6]
No matter how you look at it, that’s a long time for your loved ones to be waiting to be paid your money if they need to make ends meet.
A total of zero trustees in our review monitored or reported on end-to-end death benefit claims handling times. Nor did they have performance objectives for these times.
Many trustees didn’t even monitor how long their open death benefit claims had been going – was a claim 90 days old or 500 days old? If the trustees had done that – as we did – they would have found that claims went unresolved for months and sometimes years.
And importantly – it was an increase in complaints that led to our review of death benefits claims handling. Service complaints to the Australian Financial Complaints Authority (AFCA) about death benefit claims more than tripled in a two-year period[7], and in 2023 we saw an increase in these same complaints in trustees’ internal dispute resolution data.
If trustees had acted on this data – as we did – they may not be facing enforcement action today.
We’re not talking about anything new here – we’re talking about well-established principles of governance and responsibility. When we published our ‘Better banking for Indigenous consumers’ report,[8] we highlighted the ways banks were failing to put their customers first. When we published our report on financial hardship,[9] we highlighted the same failings by lenders.[10]
Sometimes we hear from funds that further investment in data, systems, and processes is too costly or too difficult. For example, one trustee has delayed investing in a better workflow tracking and reporting capability for close to three years – even after external advice identified deficiencies. The new capability was needed to improve a critical member service.
But the risks of not investing are just too great. It’s in the interest of all Australians to have well-run, resilient superannuation funds. So let me be clear on this point – ASIC isn’t going to question critical investments in data, systems, and processes that are essential to the delivery of member services.
But you can expect we’ll question their absence.
All this points to the cold hard truth that super trustees have to get a grip on their data, systems, and processes. They have to know what’s going on in their own business.
That is why ASIC has been calling on the sector to improve, following an ongoing thread of governance failures. And why we warmly welcome the government’s proposed mandatory and enforceable service standards to drive improvement in trustee conduct.
ASIC’s next phase of work – complaints information
It’s also why the next phase of ASIC’s work in the superannuation sector is to address these ‘board blind spots’. Specifically, our focus is on how trustees learn from and respond to the complaints they receive.
Why? Because no business can thrive without understanding the people it serves. To do this, it needs market feedback. And a primary source of this feedback is – and always will be – customer complaints. A trustee’s approach to complaints is a clear and meaningful measure of whether they’re focused on the interests of their members. It also indicates the maturity of the trustee’s approach to risk. That’s why ASIC has been urging industry to act on complaints for some time now.
Let’s not forget, it’s already an enforceable requirement to regularly analyse complaint data to identify systemic issues.[11] This is member services 101. So a failure of data, systems, and processes doesn’t just let their members down – it means trustees are failing to comply with their obligations. And, where appropriate, ASIC will pursue enforcement action in response to that failure.
After all, super trustees have an obligation to:
- act honestly
- exercise the same degree of care, skill, and diligence as a prudent trustee, and
- perform duties and exercise powers in the best financial interests of beneficiaries.[12]
Moreover, they’re required to act efficiently, honestly, and fairly in providing a super trustee service.[13] But none of this is possible without the right information. That’s why trustees must have robust arrangements in place to oversee how complaints are being handled, to be able to interrogate complaint data and have confidence that systemic issues are being addressed.
For the executives in the room who aren’t working for super trustees, just change the word ‘trustee’ to ‘company’ in a lot of what I’ve said, and know that ASIC is just as focused on how you’re supporting your customers.
If you don’t have the right information to make good judgements, you simply cannot govern effectively. It’s that fundamental. So if management isn’t collecting or providing that information – trustee board directors need to be demanding it.
It’s no good having a policy of acting in the customer’s best interest if it’s not practiced. It was an increase in complaints that led to our review of death benefits claims handling. That increase should have led to a review by the funds themselves.
But it didn’t. Why? Because they didn’t know. So I repeat – without systems in place for collecting, tracking and analysing the right information, you simply can’t fulfil your obligations.
Again and again we return to the same theme: customer-centric or member-centric can’t be lip service. It has to be lived, day in, day out. And customer-centric means complaint-aware.
Conclusion – reading the riot act
I was recently described in the Financial Review as ‘reading the riot act to big super.’[14] This is, of course, a reference to the Riot Act of 1715, which permitted an officer of the law to disperse any crowd “unlawfully, riotously, and tumultuously assembled together”.
While we usually see the phrase used to describe someone being told off, the original law required the Riot Act to be read to the crowd before any attempt was made to disperse it. Once the Act had been read, however, if the crowd failed to follow its command, all of those present were guilty of a felony. Which means that ‘reading the riot act’ actually is more than a telling-off – it’s a warning to stop making trouble or there’ll be more trouble.
So consider this speech a reminder that ASIC has read the riot act to the super industry. Super plays a crucial role in the Australian economy. It holds the trust – and the savings – of millions of Australian families, mums and dads, the old and the young. The industry has a solemn responsibility to protect the interests of all Australians, and to give them every confidence their money will be there, readily available, when it’s needed.
To the extent that some trustees aren’t across the data, systems, and processes of their funds, they’re failing to live up to that solemn responsibility.
To that extent, they’re causing more trouble and suffering for their members – their customers.
And to that extent, there will be trouble – for any trustees who fail to know their business, inside and out, and to act in the best interests of their members.
[1] ;
[4] p. 22
[6] p.77
[7] 2021-2023,
[8] REP 785 Better banking for Indigenous consumers | ASIC
[9] REP 783 Hardship, hard to get help: Lenders fall short in financial hardship support | ASIC
[10] Specifically, we outlinedhow lendersshould be taking steps to ensure their customers are aware that financial hardship assistance is available. They should be making sure their customers understand when and how to request it. And, it should go without saying, that process should be easy and efficient – with customer-facing staff trained to identify and respond to hardship notices.
[11] RG 271 Internal dispute resolution
[12] See s52(2) of the
[13] See s912A of the
[14] LucasBaird,,AustralianFinancialReview,31March2025