Joint session with APRA Executive Director, Life, Private Health Insurance and Superannuation, Jane Magill. Ms Magill’s remarks are available on the APRA website.

Check against delivery

I would like to acknowledge the Ngunnawal people's ongoing connection to and custodianship of the lands on which we meet today and pay my respects to elders past and present.

I extend that respect to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people who are here today.

It’s great to be back with you again this afternoon.

Hopefully it’s clear how much both ASIC and APRA value the opportunity to be part of this summit by the fact we return each year.

And the fact that it attracts such strong senior representation from across the sector speaks volumes about the importance of the retirement and services challenge, and the interest in it.

For ASIC this event is an opportunity to take stock of where we are and to determine whether this is the year that interest turns into demonstrably improved outcomes.

A story of inconsistency

When I spoke at this event last year, I told a story of inconsistency in how trustees were implementing the Retirement Income Covenant.

There were leaders and laggards. Some doing it well. Others, less so.

I challenged all trustees to step up.

A year later, where do we find ourselves?

Unfortunately, this year’s story is too much like the last - which is far worse than dull and repetitive. It is outright disappointing.

In fact, the gap between the leaders and the laggards in both retirement and member services is widening.

We are seeing some doing certain things well, but far too few are delivering a strong performance across all aspects of their business.

And too many are falling short on core responsibilities.

Take our recent follow-up review of death benefit claims, for example. Many trustees had taken steps to strengthen their claims processes, but too many had not done enough to address deficiencies.

And it’s those stragglers who risk undermining confidence in the industry’s readiness to serve our ageing population.

When we stepped back, we found that despite all the action and focus from us and the work of some – but certainly not all – of you in the industry, the number of claims paid inside six months only moved 3% across the period.

It was, again, not just repetitive but outright disappointing.

Similarly, when it comes to retirement, Australians need action now, not aspiration.

An estimated 2.5 million Australians are expected to transition into retirement over the next decade – that’s roughly the population of Perth.

And our consumer research shows that many of those people feel overwhelmed, unprepared and anxious about the future.

48% of Australians aged between 50 and 66 are worried that they will run out of money in retirement^[1] and - even more concerning – 14% of people over 65 who are still working believe they will never be able to retire – largely due to financial reasons.

This shows you that our retirement system is still not working for everyone.

Policy makers and regulators need to grapple with that challenge – but trustees have the most important role to play.

They can do more to educate their members, to encourage them to engage with their super, to consider their contributions and to actively plan their retirement.

Many in this room will be aware of ASIC’s independent inquiry into ASX.

When I look at what’s happening in super - it might surprise you - but I see clear parallels.

Both ASX and trustees are critical to the economy – and critical to all Australians.

ASX as the custodian of regulated monopoly critical market infrastructure, and trustees as stewards of the country’s $3.1 trillion^[2] of APRA-regulated retirement funds.

Both have had failings that have impacted the public’s confidence in their ability to provide critical services.

And in both cases, these failings are the result of whole-of-business issues, which took years to develop and will take time, investment and most importantly, governance and leadership commitment - to resolve.

As I’ve said before, as superannuation funds become larger and more systemically important, trustees need to materially improve and scale their internal capabilities to match their growing size and influence.

Retirement is a whole-of-business issue

Which brings me to retirement – the whole point of superannuation and another whole-of-business issue.

We often talk about it as an isolated challenge, but that framing is part of the problem.

Good retirement outcomes require more than just good retirement products. Every part of your business should deliver for members.

That includes how you deal with complaints, how you communicate with members, and, crucially, how you use the information available to you to improve your service.

And it’s this last point I’d really like to emphasise.

Trustees have access to a huge amount of data. One of the messages we repeat most often is that we expect you to use it – and use it well.

Not just to understand who your members are, but to understand what they – your customers - need, including as they move towards and through retirement.

That means using your data to shape clearer, more targeted retirement communications.

It means using your data to improve claims handling and member services.

And, critically, it means using your data to identify risks early and safeguard members’ retirement savings and their confidence.

Because from what we’re seeing, and despite all of our warnings, some trustees are still using their data like they were stuck in the 90s - relying on almost entirely manual indicators to monitor potential harm.

At the end of June, we released Report 833 Safeguarding Super which details how well platform trustees are monitoring potential risks to members’ retirement savings.

The findings were decidedly mixed. Once again, we see leaders and laggards, and once again we see repetition of prior findings, which is downright disappointing.

Some of the poorer performers are arguably even worse than they were two years ago.

On the other hand, the better performers are considerably better and with some “new joiners” to the better performers club, we can see that a turnaround is possible.

But of course, a system characterised by outliers is not good enough - we need to see all platform trustees consistently meeting expectations.

When we looked at the poorer performers, we saw a concerning lack of strategic monitoring.

Oversight was, at times, almost completely manual, and there were clear gaps in both controls – like fee caps set far too high to meaningfully protect savings from fee erosion – and also in action.

One trustee took more than a year to take any meaningful action after placing an advice licensee on a watchlist for suspicious activity by one of their representatives.

During that time, another representative of that licensee submitted applications to rollover superannuation balances using fake signatures from a deceased adviser.

That’s alarming – especially in the wake of the Shield and First Guardian collapses. Oversight isn’t optional – it’s your job as a trustee and it’s what Australians expect.

Some trustees are doing it well. We saw one trustee who commenced an investigation immediately after becoming aware of unusual activity relating to an advice licensee.

Within two weeks, they had suspended all advice fees payable and refunded any fees already paid.

Within two months, the licensee agreement had been terminated^[3].

That’s a trustee doing their job.

Learning from complaints

One area where we believe trustees could be doing more is learning from their customers’ complaints.

ASIC has repeatedly called on trustees to put in place systems and processes to ensure that they can learn from complaints - and yet many continue to fall short.

In an ongoing review to be released later this year, we found that close to a quarter of trustees do not undertake regular complaints analysis to detect systemic issues, despite it being an enforceable requirement.

You need to have robust arrangements in place to manage complaints, to properly interrogate complaint data and ensure that systemic issues are being identified and addressed.

Even beyond these being enforceable requirements, it’s what your members would expect.

As I said last year, complaints are your canary in the coalmine.

Some trustees are doing it well and again, encouragingly, this now includes some former laggards joining the leaders.

One trustee, for example, noticed a trend in complaints from existing allocated pension members wanting to add extra money into their pension account.

The trustee reviewed those complaints. They identified where the common pain points were and they took action to address them.

That’s a win for the trustee and a win for their members.

We want to see more of that: more internal analysis and more trustees benchmarking complaints so that they can properly measure their performance.

And they shouldn’t stop at complaints. We want to see trustees benchmarking every aspect of their business.

Member services are whole-of-business challenge.

Don’t benchmark in your backyard

For those who want to be among the better trustees – the member and retirement service ‘winners’ for your customers - that’s what you need to be doing.

We know some trustees are beginning to make better use of data and to benchmark their performance.

But we see firms focusing on relative positioning, when the real issue is baseline capability. It’s not about being slightly better than your peers. It’s about whether the system itself is good enough.

We can all see the same digitally-fuelled acceleration of the globalisation of markets and investments that is the hallmark of 2026.

If trustees are benchmarking only against domestic peers, they’re already behind. Competition is global and cross-industry – you need to benchmark against best practice.

To again use ASX as an example, 28,000 Australian retail investors invested directly in the SpaceX IPO. They didn’t do that through the ASX – they did it through Nasdaq, via Commsec. Australians are looking globally – so trustees should be looking globally too. Capital is mobile – if we stop competing for it, we risk becoming irrelevant.

Private credit in super

Before finishing up, I want to touch on private credit, because any discussion about improving retirement or investment outcomes would be incomplete without considering the implications of this growing asset class.

As you’ll be aware, ASIC has recently voiced our concern about the risks private credit poses to Australians through their super.

We’re not saying don’t invest in private credit. We recognise that private credit has a legitimate place in diversified portfolios, but it comes with responsibility.

Trustees need to be able to demonstrate that private assets are valued appropriately, that liquidity risks are understood and managed, and that disclosures to members are accurate, transparent and effective. Just like with member services, these responsibilities are yours, as trustees, however you arrange your business and investment services – including when you outsource to fund managers.

When we look at practices across the sector, including the findings of our recent surveillances in areas like auditing of trustees, we’re not yet satisfied that trustees are doing that sufficiently well.

Closing

I often say it is rare to find a trustee whose intent is not to help Australians enjoy a good retirement – today’s attendance is, again, proof of that.

For me, the question isn’t one of intent, nor of whether the system can deliver better retirement outcomes – it can. The question is whether trustees can ensure the whole of their business is delivering for their customers up to and into retirement.

Thank you.

 

^[1] Pg 2 Moneysmart Key Research Findings

^[2] Quarterly superannuation performance statistics highlights - March 2026 | APRA

^[3] Pg. 19 Report REP 833 Safeguarding super: How well are platform trustees monitoring risks to retirement savings?