Feb. 17, 2026

Brand Recognition, Churn, and Retirement: What’s Really Moving the Superannuation Needle

Show Notes

#19. Co-hosts Neil Benson and Sarah Penn unpack the latest trends and news impacting the superannuation industry.

We cover:

Super brand recognition: Surprising results from a Conjointly brand tracker highlight low public awareness of major super brands, including only 57% recognition for AussieSuper and 49% for Hostplus, challenging industry assumptions.
The complexity and cost of rebranding: Rebrands are frequent but often more about internal politics than member benefit, and establishing a new name remains a major challenge.
The effectiveness of marketing: Despite significant marketing spend, switching rates and member engagement appear largely unchanged, raising questions about return on investment.
Member churn and fund flows: Recent reports show industry fund outflows to adviser-led platforms are modest compared to overall inflows, with most money still coming in via default arrangements rather than active switching.
Retention dilemmas: As members with larger balances approach retirement, funds struggle to retain them, particularly when financial advisers commonly recommend rolling over to retail platforms.
Regulatory challenges and innovation barriers: Uncertainty around advice laws is inhibiting proactive member communications and innovation, especially in retirement products.
Fraud and scam protection: ASIC urges funds to strengthen member communications to prevent fraud, but losses remain minor (at $22 million), and tougher controls could erode member experience.
Confidence and legislative change: Frequent government tinkering causes member concern, yet most changes aim to improve fairness, and fears of losing all super are unfounded.
New superannuation legislation: Discussion around the Building a Stronger and Fairer Super System bill, with support for balancing changes to both high and low-balance accounts.
Industry news: Notable updates include Commonwealth Super’s major tech upgrade, HESTA CEO Debbie Blakey’s retirement, and the release of a new AFCA complaints guide.
Personal achievement: Neil celebrates passing the RG 146 superannuation qualification after a challenging process.

RESOURCES

Super brand tracker confirms golden status of AustralianSuper | Financial Standard - Brand Tracker by Conjointly based on 1344 individuals. 57% recognised AustralianSuper, 49% Hostplus, 48% AMP, 47% Rest, 45% CBUS. Survey also ranked consideration, performance perception, and customer support.
Superannuation customer churn hits First Super, NGS Super and Hostplus hardest. 6% churn on average, based on APRA data analysed by Elula. Lots of funds claiming the switches were inactive, low balance accounts being swept up by ATO. APRA has noticed that member accounts and flows into accounts outside the top 10 had declined.
Industry super funds are losing business to retail wealth platforms such as HUB24 and Netwealth at an accelerating pace. Members seeking more holistic retirement advice. One analyst reckoned that a 10% uplift in advisor capacity could see $100B in flows to retail platforms to which my financial advisor responded, "I've got more chance of captaining the Australian Cricket Team & marrying Heidi Klum in the same year than a 10% increase in advisers resulting in $100bn of flows."
Commonwealth Super Corp to consolidate legacy IT systems | Financial Standard. CSC to consolidate a number of systems. It manages several schemes and it sounds like they are bringing them all together. Mercer is the admin partner and Novigi is the data partner. Limited service period. Imagine they watched HESTA's experience closely.
Super trustees told to up fraud protection game | Financial Standard ASIC compared super sector's fraud prevention to banks and found significant gaps, mostly in documentation and member communications. $22m in super-related scams in 2025.
AFCA's new superannuation complaints guide (for funds and members)
Treasury Laws Amendment (Building a Stronger and Fairer Super System) Bill 2026 – Parliament of Australia - second reading today. Boost to LISTO and changes to tax concessions on balances over $3m and 10.