Welcome to that super show, the podcast. We talk about all things super from the inside. I'm Neil Benson, founder of Novagentic.

And I'm Sarah Penn, CEO of Mayflower Consulting. Each week we unpack what's changing in the industry, what funds are wrestling with and how tech and regulation are shaping the landscape.

Sometimes we bring in expert guests, but mostly it's just us having a real conversation about how super is working and what could make it even better.

Let's get into.

G', day, Sarah. How's things going? It's been a busy period in Superannuation. I hope you're ready to record another session with me.

Hi Neil. I certainly am. There's a lot happening. Let's get into it.

All right, what have you got first?

Well, first of all we've got some very interesting news about super brands, which includes the fact that one of the most well recognised brands is Commbank super, which I had never heard of.

I'm not a Commbank customer, so I haven't heard of it either.

So it was a brand tracker by conjointly they asked 1,344 individuals and interestingly only 57% of people recognized Aussie super and 49% Host plus, which I guess just goes to show that we are well and truly inside the jam jar and occasionally do forget what the real world is like, because I was stunned.

Even AMP, who's been around for over 100 years, only scored 47.5% brand name recognition.

I know crazy when I compare it to Aussie Super. Superannuation to my mind is actually a little bit like a utility. Right? We all have it, it's all part of our lives as an adult.And maybe they asked children, maybe that's the thing. No, I don't think they did that.But if you compare it to something like Telstra, which would have high 90s brand recognition, how Aussie super only has 57%, like not even 2/3, I don't know. Anyway, more research required, clearly.And also one might suggest that all that millions they're spending on marketing is perhaps not having the cut through. I don't mean Aussie super specifically, but the large funds.

Well, there's some issues I have with this survey. Insignia Financial where top of the charts when it came to performance perception.So this is people's perception of the returns they can get from Insignia Financial. 71% Believe that Insignia Financial had great returns, very competitive returns and yet only 4.3% of people had heard of it.So yeah, there's Some, some funny numbers in the survey. But it's interesting.

There are some very funny numbers. But I do like some funny numbers because it makes you think.It makes you think, like the way that we look at how the industry works compared to how your average punter in the street thinks about it. It just shows you how different it is. That's.

You notice that they. The recent. The funds that emerged recently and created a new brand, thinking of care. Super. Australian Retirement Trust, even aware. Super.Those names are, you know, not really on the chart when it comes to recognition. So establishing a new name in a crowded marketplace can be, you know, pretty difficult.

Yeah, it is. Rebrands are one of those things you really should only do if you're absolutely stuck and can't move forward with any other option.And often in my experience, and having not been very close to any of the brand renames you just mentioned, but in my experience, brand names and that sort of stuff often becomes more about the egos of people making the decisions than it really does about what's in the best interests of the business itself, which is one of those things that it's very. It's very difficult to sort of combat that.But it often, it often really is about, you know, I'm the chair of XYZ Company and I'm blowed if you're going to take that away from me or you've got multiple companies where you've got everyone saying that. So in the end you have to come up with a new name because no one's willing to give up theirs.Even though financially for the business, it would be much better if you just kept one of the names, but no one can agree, so you end up doing something new. My favorite actually is Allianz Retire Invest, powered by Pimco. And in my head I always say written by committee afterwards, which is very rude.But that's the like, that's the thing.

Well, I come from the Microsoft land where the product names are humongous and incredibly long and hard to remember and pronounce and they change every time there's a new chief marketing officer in charge of the group. So, you know, let's all, yes, let's all log into Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Insights Journeys. You can send an email campaign.It's just ridiculous.

But at least, I guess, at least in Microsoft's defense, which I do not come to very often, as you well know, it's still Microsoft. Yeah, they haven't changed Microsoft to something else.You know, even Facebook's now Called like the parent company is Meta and Google's parent company is Alphabet, which again is, I would say is ego over sensibleness.

So branding is hard and expensive.

Branding is very hard. That's right. And expensive and easy to get. Wrong.

I wonder if it's necessary because we're going to talk about Some great reports have come out recently around Churn in Superannuation and all the marketing spend that you invest in to fill up your bucket and can be undone if there's big leaks and holes at the bottom of the bucket and members are switching out. So tell us about some of these reports have been coming out over the last week or two. Sarah.

Yes, so this is very interesting actually. There's been a new report from Connexus.They've separated it between natural flows, which sounds very crunchy granola, and competitive flows, which sounds very the opposite.It's interesting in that when you look at the competitive flows in adverted commas, you will see most of the money is going to advisor led platforms like Hub24 and Netwealth and what have you. And you look at the graph, there's big green to advisor platforms and big red against industry funds.But when you look at those numbers, it's like $250 million going the wrong way. Oh my God. But then when you look at the natural flows, AKA where the actual money's going, it's like Aussie super got $13 billion last year.

So 13 billion. While it's probably $250 million switched away.

Yes, that's right.So while if I'm in the marketing department in Aussie, it's probably incredibly frustrating and teeth grinding, the truth of the matter is it doesn't actually have very much impact what the marketing that they're doing, except maybe it's stopping the losses being greater, I'm not sure.But it's probably not having that much impact because what actually has the impact is all the people whose money is automatically going into Aussie because of their employment agreement and it's been like that for a long time. And it's just. That's just where their money's going and they're not really thinking about it. It's sort of both at once. Like on the one hand, yeah.From a marketing perspective, when people are actively making a choice about where their super goes, they are not choosing industry funds. That's the sum of it. Well, when you look at where the money's going, they're not choosing industry funds.

There's a couple of interesting stats that come out of those reports, Alula, who's an AI consultancy, develops software to spot those moments of loyalty.Their analysis was there's about a 5.7% churn on average in the average super fund, meaning you know, the percentage of member accounts that are switching every year.Based on the APRA data that they analyzed, lots of funds were claiming that a lot of those switches were actually just inactive low balance accounts being swept up by the ato. So that those count as churn, I guess. And you know, the number of accounts there is reasonably significant, but the balances are tiny, so.But APRA did notice that the number of member accounts and the flows into those accounts outside the top 10 super funds had declined. And that's something that they're keeping an eye on.

Yes. APRA has three tests where they look at cash coming in, accounts coming in and net rollovers.And they would like you like the way that your, you know, year 10 English teacher would like you to have all those three positive. And there's very few funds actually where all three are positive because it's about whether or not your fund is going to last well into the future.

So what do you reckon about this, the outflows then to the platforms? It's obviously the members with much larger balances. They're nearing retirement. Are they looking for that holistic retirement advice?Going to an advisor and the advisor's recommending they switch out?

Without a doubt, yeah. Yeah, that's absolutely what's happening.Interestingly, the independent advisor that I, hey, Jennifer, that I conned into being on a panel at that IBRC conference last year, she was like, everyone's going to hate me. But, but the, you know, as she said, people come to her and they say, I don't care who my supers with.Which is 100% backed up by that super brand tracker research. They said, I don't care who my supers with, I just want to know it somewhere sensible.You, you figure it out and tell me and I'll fill out, you know, you fill out the paperwork and I'll sign it. And I think that unfortunately is really the sum of things, is that people are not loyal to their super fund.And that lack of loyalty then means that when they do have lots of money and they get near retirement and they go and see an advisor, they switch.

We talked on the show before about the number of advisors in Australia is only about 10,000 active financial advisors. So that's a lot of money flowing around.Given that there's only a handful of advisors in the country I noticed one analyst said that if there was a 10% uplift in advisor capacity that we could see $100 billion inflows over to the region. And my own financial advisor responded on that LinkedIn thread.He said I've got more chance of captaining the Australian cricket team and marrying Heidi Klum in the same year than a 10% increase in advisors, resulting in $100 billion of flows. So at least one advisor is skeptical of the switch. Well, we'll see.Hopefully there'll be some recovery in advisor numbers and we'll see over the next couple of years whether those flows accelerate.But I think the conexus data that, that we've seen suggests that there isn't really a, you know, a significant upward trend in the outflows from the big funds year on year. It's, you know, it's up year up in some years and down in some others. I wouldn't say, yeah, steady upward trend.

So no, I wouldn't either. The churn rate is very, is really pretty, pretty static. It just kind of hovers around, which is interesting actually. And again, points to.And I'm sorry that I'm really picking on marketing people today and I apologise profusely because I've been in marketing jobs when you don't have a lot of control over what happens.But it would suggest that actually the squillions of dollars that are being spent on marketing is not moving the dial at a macro level in terms of the number of people switching.

So what's the answer? Develop better products, employ more advisors. How should super funds be thinking about retaining those members as they approach retirement?That's the big question at the moment in super, right?You can attract all the new members you want all day long, you know, people joining the workforce with zero balances and getting a couple hundred bucks a month in contributions. Or you can stop the outflows of the multimillion dollar retirees and invest at that end.And you've really got to pick what type of fund you want to be. We talked before about this bifurcation of funds into accounts retirement funds. Can you be all things to all people?It's a really tough question for the executive teams at every single major super fund in the country right now.

Yeah, I completely agree.Actually, do you know what someone put on LinkedIn this morning that they felt like there's a lot of people who are currently in head of retirement type roles and this guy who's, I think a recruiter was saying he's speaking to people in those roles who've been doing it for three or five years and have just had enough, they can't get any money to do anything different. They put forward all these ideas, nothing ever gets up. The dial is not being moved.I think there is something there actually in that the retirement income covenant's been around for five years or something now and APRA's been banging on about super funds have to do things differently but the net result of that has been some fancy PowerPoints and bugger all, apart from very few cases of real differences.

Yeah, I've seen some conversations recently, for example about annuities and members with five years to go until they're thinking about retiring, there's no way. I've got to consider an annuity. It's such a locked up product and it leaves nothing for my kids and no way.So you can invest all you like in fancy annuity style products but people aren't interested. So it's. Yeah, it's a real bind. I'm not quite sure what the answer is.We can't all afford fancy financial advisors to look after us in retirement and that's not the answer.

So no, I think what will definitely actually help Molino Mate is getting some of that legislation through around nudges and being able to speak to people on a more mass scale and being able to do sort of semi personalized correspondence out to people to talk to them and say, you know, hi Sarah, you turned 50 recently, that's a year ago now, I'm very old. You turned 50 recently and your balance is X and you're probably starting to think about retirement because most people do when they turn 50.Here's some things you might like to think about. Here's some advice tools we've got and here's a webinar you might like to watch.At the moment, funds are too nervous to do that because of the issues around personal advice.So as soon as we can have that legislation to be able to do those nudges and things, I think that will make a massive, a massive difference actually because it really will give boards a bit of comfort. Because I actually think that's the main issue at the moment is no one wants to do something that feels like it's high risk.Whether that's spending a lot of money on a tech build or doing some kind of big comms campaign or yeah, doing anything else that they're worried they might end up in court being told that they ran afoul of personal advice laws and now they're in massive amount of trouble.And I think until we've super funds have got some kind of thing that says it's okay to have a go at this stuff and benefit the 95% then we're still stuck.

Well, it's not the first time or probably the last time we'll ever see pressure from the government or the day from the regulators saying this would be great if you could focus on this and by the way, we're going to provide no legislative or regulatory clarity. Please innovate but if you put a step wrong we will clobber you.

Yes.

So let's, let's invite some heads of retirement onto the show to tell us what the plans are, what their ideas are, what's working, what, what ideas they have to innovate and keep those members at the moment of truth and you know what the struggles are as well. Love to see what the challenges are facing the retirement teams at the big super funds.

Yes, absolutely, let's do it. I mean now we've solved that problem.

In other news, Commonwealth super is undergoing a major systems event.I think they're starting tomorrow actually, so best of luck that yes, we're going to have a limited service period for a couple of weeks as they consolidate a bunch of back office systems. The CSC manages a number of different Commonwealth schemes on behalf of ADF and the public sector employees and so on.So it sounds like they're trying to bring all those together and consolidate the number of different IT systems in the background.

Yes, we wish them all the very best. They're only having a two week outage which sounds like a much more sensible amount of time out of the market to me. Which I guess leads on to.Debbie Blakey of Hester is retiring after 11 years and she has definitely been through a tumultuous last 12 months. I would say yes, I do not envy her last 12 months at all. Any old which way.

I think I read when she started in the role as CEO at HESTA they were a $30 billion fund. Today they're over $100 billion. So it's obviously join US growth. So well done.The in the fin review they noted her ambition to participate on more boards and given that she's been a vocal critic on behalf of her members about the way that, you know, public companies are run, they were wondering if she'll be welcome or not. Good luck with your move over there.I'm sure the CSC team have been watching the, the Hester experience closely when it comes to consolidating moving systems.

So I think it's good to have people on boards who don't think boards are the best thing ever.

I love a good skeptic on my team.

Yeah, absolutely, yes, absolutely. Otherwise it just becomes a whole lot of back patting. Aren't we very good, Neil? Oh yes we are Sarah. How wonderful. Shall we have a cup of tea?

I think Debbie, get in there and hold them all to a card. Be good.

Yes, I think so too. What else have we got? Oh, ASIC's been honoured super trustees to up their fraud protection game.Yeah, there were $22 million in super related scams in 2025, Neil. Well that's a lot of money.

What they did is they compared the fraud prevention so I guess mostly around the communications and the documentation.So if there is a fraud or I guess just the general communication to superannuation members isn't up to snuff when they compared it to the communication that comes from banks for example. There's a.Was a big gap there in the documentation and the kind of comms that went out to customers and so I think you know, super funds can, can pick up the game. What do we think about $22 million in in scams last year?

Interestingly, I do agree around the communications and as someone who does a lot of work in communications and if yours is struggling please do give me a call because I can help you fix it.The comm side is interesting and unfortunately it is that thing where perception becomes reality because putting the comms thing to one side, $22 million out of four point something trillion dollars is such a tiny amount I can't even.And to my mind I actually think it's an acceptable amount of loss and I actually think if you try and get that down to zero, you are, you would really start to run afoul of BFID best financial interest duty calculations and your customer experience will go down the toilet.And then as we were talking before around loyalty to funds people want their money protected but they also do actually want to have some kind of level of half decent customer service.

Well, I liken it to my father in law shaking his fist at the local council when they reduce the speed limits to try and reduce the number of road traffic accidents. If the speed limit was zero, great, there'd be no road traffic accidents at all and we'd all be stuck down because we couldn't go anywhere.$22 Million in scam related losses in the superannuation sector you could stop all withdrawals and get to.

Yeah, that's right. No one gets any money and our scam protection is 100%. Ta da.

That's an acceptable level of losses. We've talked about that. When we consider AI and will it be perfect. So I think 22 million is probably acceptable. Could we improve the communication?Sure. Even if all that does is to improve people's confidence that their money is safe within the super system.

Yes. Yes it is. It's definitely the confidence thing.As you were just saying before we jumped on about what people have been saying on Reddit around not putting their money in Super. Do you want to tell listeners about that? I thought that was.

I quite often hear these grumbles about the number of changes in the superannuation system over the 20 or 30 years. 1800 Legislative and regulatory changes.

Who did count them all.

That's what I want. A lawyer.I'm sure you know the vast, vast majority of those changes and we're seeing some go through Parliament today, are about making the system fairer for everybody.Because designing a system as complicated as super, you know, that's going to last hopefully forever, for decades and decades is impossible to have designed a perfect system at the outset and demographics change and the size of the system is. Is wild compared to how it started.And so we need to keep tweaking it and this latest set of amendments won't be the last and we'll tweak it more in the future.But people who see those changes who become nervous and go, oh, I don't want to invest inside super because the government could change the retirement age or the preservation age. I'm going to do something else with my money. Like invest in property.

Oh yes, Property safe as housing safety.

And now we're seeing a Senate committee investigating.

Select committee.

That's right. So there is no part of the tax system that is safe from government meddling. It's just reality.

Yes. What they call it, it's the. The Select Committee on the Operation of the CGT Discount in Property.

Right. So very focused review. This isn't a show about property investment. Let's not go there.But it just goes to show that inside super, outside super, governments will change things and we'll meddle. All we have to do as superannuation professionals is to make sure our system is perceived to be safest houses.

I guess that's the interesting thing, isn't it? If you unpack it. Why. Why do people get so hot under the collar around super but blithely ignore all the rest of it?

That's right. Yep.

And I guess it's because you can't get your money for a long time so you're having to put your faith in, in the future governments not doing anything stupid. But I mean governments are elected, right? They want to keep their constituents happy because otherwise they will not get re elected.And so while there will always be tinkering the idea that somehow the government will one day just turn around and go, that $4 trillion isn't yours anymore, you know people, now it's ours because we're the government or something. It's just, it's just ridiculous. Well, makes me a bit crazy.

Obviously there are more. I think the number of people wearing tinfoil hats on Reddit is slightly higher than the average industry population.I don't want to take all my inputs from the crazies on Reddit, but they are a fun bunch to hang out with.

I actually think Reddit is a reasonable, is a reasonable cross section actually because I think there's a lot of people who say that they don't like putting more than they absolutely have to into super because the government could change it at any moment and I might lose a lot. That, that's the sort of underlying thing. But you think about it, you know, come on team, the government could change it and I might lose the lot.It's like what, what could the government change that would actually meant that you lost all your money?

Well, I think one of the fears is the government would change the preservation age. So they might, they might, instead of being able to retire and draw your super at 60, they could change it to 67.But I think if they did that they would push a huge cost, a huge burden onto the age pension. And so it's not the government's interest to do. That's right, your own money, not theirs.

That's right.Plus Anyone who's aged 59 and a half wouldn't vote for them the next election or anyone who turned, you know, turned 60 during that three year period would be so upset they'd get thrown out at the next election, which they wouldn't want.So yeah, I think it's a, it's an interesting thing though, but it is something that as people, as we work in superannuation that we always have to be aware of that super is held to a higher standard and people do expect it to be run better, which is why things like scams, it really is the communication and the management, whether it's scam management or insurance claims or death benefits or onboarding or whatever, people do expect it to be good because otherwise it Makes them nervous.

Sorry. Speaking of tinkering, we have one going through Parliament today, the Treasury.

Oh yes.

Building a stronger and fairer super system. Bill 2026 think it's in its second reading as we speak. This is better known as the changes to LISTO and Division 296 tax concession changes.

Yes, it's finally happening.I'm very happy and I'm also happy that at the very top end the balance is over 3 million and 10 million and the changes to Listo is one piece of legislation.

Yep.

Because I think that's the, that's really the point, isn't it?You know, that if you have massively high balance, you've got a balance over 3 mil, maybe you might, you know, you might have to cough up an extra thousand dollars or something. You're not even going to notice it versus people who are on very low incomes. It makes us.It will make a significant difference to how much, how much sleeper they have in the end. So I'm, I'm all for it. I hope it passes smoothly. Yes, that'd be a good way to start the year.

Quite a balanced piece of legislation. It's been long anticipated.It's been quite a tumultuous journey as it's come, you know, through various drafts and yep, we had all sorts of shenanigans that were removed, so that was good.I have been hearing a few rumblings from financial advisors of very wealthy clients worried about an impact upon estates and whether this will impact the amount of tax that's paid on a deceased member's estate.And it's really a bit of a gray death tax that the government has managed to introduce because as you begin to wrap up the assets within an estate that could cause the balance to push over $10 million and you have to wait until the end of the financial year in order to settle all of that, which I think is no bad thing either. Is not supposed to be an estate like Legacy leaving Vehicle. It's, you know, for the ultra rich.

No, no, it is not. Yeah. I'm trying to think under what circumstances? I feel bad about that and nothing's coming.

Oh, Sarah. We've lost all of our multi million.

Oh, no, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Very rich people, really. I am. No, I'm not. I'm not sorry at all.I think the thing is all those people are incredibly well advised, or at least they should be and if they need to take money out of the super system a bit earlier, well, they can do that because this is the Thing. Right. It's not like you have to leave the money in super if you don't.If you don't like it and you've got more than 10 million bucks in super, you are more than welcome. And in fact, the government would be very happy if you took the rest of it out.

Yes. Yep.

There you go. Go and do something else with it. That'd be lovely.You can go and buy gold bullion like all those people I've seen lining up outside ABC Gold in the City.

Just don't spend too much of it because we've got a bit of an inflation problem at the moment, so, you know, fewer super yachts and airplanes, please. Maybe more charitable donations. Thank you.

Yes. Charitable donations. Do something good with your money.

A couple of final things. New superannuation Complaints Guide. And it's.It's designed, I think, for superannuation service providers and for consumers, but it's 100 pages, so I'm not. There is a short video.

There's a video. I suggest you watch the video if you're a punter.

But for those of us working in complaints management, the. The new AFGHA guiding was published in December. Worth. Yeah, yeah.

It's worth it. Definitely. Yes. Yeah. It hasn't been updated for about five years, so since the introduction of AFCA actually. So it's.It's very well worthwhile having a read and I'm sure if you work in complaints or communication.Actually, back on the other one, it's really good to understand what Aafka's expectations are and of course they are spelt out in detail, over 100 pages.

Yeah, very good. I'll be asking AI for a summary of that one.

Yeah, I think that's very wise. And our final one, you've gone back to school.

Oh, I did, yeah. So I don't know what episode we recorded and I asked you to hold me to account.I was studying for my RGB 146 superannuation qualification, which I passed last week. I was studying a couple of weeks ago. I logged back in and it had completely disappeared.I contacted the Astral Learning team, they said, well, you've taken so long to study, your course has expired. I was like, oh, crumbs. I didn't realize there was an expiry date. And you wouldn't notify me before it expired.But they restored it, thank you very much. And I did the multiple choice test and then the written assignment last week, both of which were really tough, actually. Way harder than I had.Bastard. Yeah. So 60 questions. This question has five parts. You have to get all five parts right. Oh my good Lord.So a lot of questions and tax calculations and all sorts of stuff. So very thorough. I feel like I put through the ringer, but I passed, so pretty chuffed.

Oh, well done. Now you can add RG146 to your LinkedIn profile.

That's right. So if things don't work out with AI agents in superannuation, I will be applying for contact center jobs in a super fund. Neil, you.

Excellent. I'm sure you'd be excellent on the phones, Neil.

I wonder how many people would recognize my voice in the podcast.

Yeah, probably quite a few. We've had more than a thousand downloads, so definitely there's a few people listening to us, which is wonderful.

So thank you to everybody who listens. If you are listening and enjoying the show, make sure you let your team know. Just drop it in the next team meeting. Have you listened to this podcast?It's the best podcast for superannuation professionals in the country.

That's right. Most highly rated and only one with episodes in 2026.

That's right. So make sure you share it with your team folks and really appreciate you. Thanks so much for joining us on another episode of that super show.We'll catch you next time.

Thanks all. See you soon.

Thanks for listening to that super show. We hope today's episode gave you something useful to take back to your team.

If you're thinking we should talk, we'd love to chat. You can book a meeting with either of us via the link in the show notes.

And don't forget to follow the show, share it with a colleague, and drop us a line if there's a topic you want us to tackle.

Catch you next time on that super show.