Day One Highlights from the IBRC Future Fund Admin Conference

G', day.

It's Neil and you're listening to that super show.

We're coming to you live from the IBRC Future Fund Admin Forum.

And in this episode, Sarah and I cover day one.

Mega Fund predictions the looming reality of payday super and whether big funds can ever nail member services.

Plus, Sarah reveals her ultimate AI productivity hack.

Let's get started.

Welcome to that super show, the podcast where we talk about all things super from the inside.

Hi, I'm Neil Benson, Chief Product Officer at Chandler cx.

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 it.

Good morning, everyone.

This is Sarah and Neil coming to you from the IBRC Future Fund Admin Conference.

Ne, how are you going?

Great, Sarah.

We're live here recording in the lobby of the conference and it's about to open up.

We're just a little bit early, so there's people having coffee in the background, having breakfast.

So if you hear some background noise, it's because we're coming live to you from the Fund Admin Forum in the real world.

It's crazy.

Day two.

Sarah, we're looking forward to lots of great sessions today, but let's reflect back on day one.

A great day yesterday to kick us off.

What did you learn yesterday?

It was a really good day, actually.

I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Stephen Hubbard, who put the program today together, did an amazing job, as always.

Probably the big takeout from me was the real focus on member, actually and interestingly, because it is the Fund Admin conference.

But often fund admin conferences turn into a lot of discussion around all of us on this side of the fence and forget the punters on the other side of the fence.

So that for me was the.

Was the really big one.

Why don't you tell us about the first session of the day from Mercer now, Marsh.

Yes, that's right.

We had Richard Dunn from Mercer talking about fund administration in the next decade.

I'd love to see his slides later because I think they'd make great handouts.

There's a lot of very small writing on very big charts.

A couple of takeaways for me.

Really interesting stats.

The end state of super, which is like peak funds under management.

Mercer is predicting around 12 trillion, up from $4.5 trillion today by 2045, which is going to be about 17% of the Australia GDP.

It's pretty amazing, huh?

Tucked away in our retirement system.

By 2035, Mercer is predicting there will be 30 APRA regulated funds left and 20 funds left by 2050.

And that's a combination of mega funds, platforms, niche funds, accumulation funds and retirement funds are kind of the categories that Mercer is seeing in the future rather than just this black and white.

Your retail fund or you're an industry fund, those categories are going to fade away according to Mercer.

That was a really interesting session.

I agree, it was fascinating.

One of the things that I wasn't 100% sure about though is are we really going to get down to 30 something funds?

And the reason that I'm not sure about that is actually we're now at the point where those little funds, if you're a very big fund, there is nothing in your members best interest to take on the small ones.

So while APRA and everyone else might be kind of running around, kind of nudging, pushing, hello team, we don't need so many funds.

I'm not actually sure where the small ones are going to go unless there are some new business models that sort of appear.

But at the same time the external trustee model is well and truly in the spotlight under pressure, under a huge amount of pressure.

So I can see why the modeling suggests that's going to happen based on predictive modelling is always based on what's already happened.

Right.

You look at the path and see where it's going to go.

I'm just not sure if the things that have got us to here are going to be the things that are going to get us down to 22, 20 or 30.

But it's going to be interesting to watch.

I'll bring the popcorn.

Your assertion that there's really nothing in it for the members of Australian super to acquire a tiny fund, there's no economies of scale, there's no reduction in admin fees, there's no product innovation, there's very little benefit for the members of Aussie super or any big mega fund to acquire a smaller fund.

Great point.

Maybe it's just a lot of small funds have to come together.

Maybe, maybe.

I mean, maybe we already have ifs, which is owned by a bunch of industry funds which does funds management and a bunch of other services.

Maybe.

I was thinking maybe we'll end up with a sort of a.

It won't be a trustee for hire, but it'll be a trustee that is owned jointly by a number of small funds.

That would be one way to defray the costs of everyone having their own license but avoid the pure external trustee.

That apparently is not the thing.

Yeah.

We'll invite Richard on to tell us more about his predictions or Mersh's predictions for the future of administration and fair funds.

Next up, we had Maureen from ASFA reminding us how many business days.

Oh my God, 30 business days.

We shall be like 20 by the time you punters hear these.

Maureen is the lead at asfa.

Maureen Daily, I should say is the lead at ASFA on payday.

Super.

So 30 business days to go.

First of July.

It's coming, it's inevitable.

It's almost here.

Yes.

It's one of those things where I think super funds, I'm sure all the super funds are doing their very level best to get organized.

I did raise though.

I stuck my hand up and asked a question, one of many, which was what is everyone doing around communication?

Because as a small business owner, I have had almost no communication from anyone and most people in Australia are actually employed by small businesses.

So while super funds are speaking to their big employers, they're not speaking to the small ones.

And often I'm told in further discussion on our table that that's because they don't have the data.

They literally might only have an ABN from an employer, nothing else.

And that just means that they can't get the info to contact.

So then you're left with, well, who should be doing it?

There's the ato.

ATO definitely has my details.

They're certainly quick to tell me when there's tax to be paid and they know I'm an employer.

I think I might have had one email from the ATO maybe, but I might just be imagining it.

Maybe it's Zero's job and MYOB and the other and the other crowds.

But I have had no communication from any of them.

No.

Stephen shared a stat yesterday that 80% of members and 50% of employers have no idea.

Yeah, I totally believe it and I think everyone's just assuming, as these things do, that the super funds will sort it out, magically sort it out.

And I think that's a very fraught way to do things.

So yeah, give it a couple of months and we'll see.

Hey team.

Yeah.

One of the reflections I had during Maureen's presentation was if I'm trying to resolve a bad contribution from an employer, there's a mix up of the member ID or something.

I've got three months to resolve that.

Before another payment with a bad ID comes in from 1st of July, I might have a week.

Yeah, that's right.

There's another payment coming for a weekly payroll run and those number of errors, the volume is just going to compound and compound.

So.

Yeah, well, it will be a pile on, like dealing with lost mail.

Yeah, I've got to get my skates on because the volumes are going to balloon.

So a lot of work to do.

Similarly, Sarah, I looked through my email, email to see how many times people communicated to me about Payday Super.

You know, I'm a member of a lot of funds for market research purposes.

And none of us, none, none of.

Them have said anything.

I got a couple of emails from ASFA and three emails from that super show about Payday Super.

We're trying, everyone, we're trying.

Yeah, woeful under communication on all fronts there.

Next up, we had Jordan Lamb, who is from Hester.

She's the manager of Member Value Proposition there.

She was a bit of a standout for me, I've got to say.

Awesome presentation and a great personal story woven in to this theme of operational efficiency in the era of the Mega Fund and how you can have efficiency and intimacy and they're just two sides of the same coin.

Well, although she didn't really have any examples of where someone had achieved it, I was wondering, while we were sitting there, I was thinking, we don't really expect Telstra to have good customer service, so why do we expect that Aussie super or any large fund will have good customer service?

I guess because it's so much more important in our lives.

Yeah, I think so.

But the mechanics of a large company are the mechanics of a large company.

So, anyway.

But yes, I'm absolutely here for her ideas.

I thought they were great standouts from you.

Yeah, she was talking about the different ways that we can measure how we're doing for our customers, particularly in terms of maybe a merger or an SFT or some other major event at a fund.

And I guess she's reflecting on Hester's transition to grow and some of the metrics that she encouraged her team to measure to see how they're doing and really put themselves in the shoes of their members.

And then four recommendations she made to other funds.

Sarah, can you remember some of the metrics that Jordan highlighted?

Indeed I can, because I was smart enough to take a screenshot because otherwise you'd have nothing.

Right.

Probably the one we were talking about before we started recording actually is Journey Continuity, which is how many times was the Member the integration layer between our teams.

And I think that's a really interesting idea.

It's hard to.

Probably quite hard to measure, at least initially, because we're all used to only measuring stuff on our own side of the fence.

But as people may know, I actually have a autoimmune disease and I see a lot of specialists and none of them speak to any of the other ones.

I am constantly that integration layer, and it is a pain in the neck having to repeat the whole story every single time.

So it's very interesting to think about how we can make the member not be that integration layer.

And I think some funds are actually doing this by having the sort of concierge service, especially for people going through claims and that sort of stuff, where you have one person at the fund who's your person, who kind of shepherds it through.

Yeah, I think that's a great example of where some members might feel like they are the integration layer.

You know, they have.

Yeah, absolutely.

Something from the claims team and go back to the insurer.

Yeah, Insurer has to, you know.

Yeah.

Take that result and then go back to the claims team at the fund.

It's like a zigzag.

It's like us member, insurer, member, admin member, Us again, member someone else in our team member.

Yeah.

So let's make that integration seamless across the different business units and departments and service providers as well.

That's more important.

But again, I sort of think value is a very internal to us conversation.

That's how marketing teams, of which I've been one many times, talk about things, you know, providing value.

But I'm not sure that the average person on the street really thinks about value.

Some people do.

There is definitely a cohort that do.

But a lot of people, it's just a lot less.

It's a lot less clear than that.

It's like asking people, why did you buy X brand of car?

And they'll give you a whole rundown of the features and, you know, all the reasons that I don't know anything about cars, as you can tell by me failing at 8 o' clock in the morning, they'll give you a rundown of all the reasons they bought it.

But if you actually track it back and look at their buying history and their family's buying history, you'll find it very likely that their parents had the same brand of car.

Right, okay.

So, yeah.

And there ain't nothing in that around value.

That's where all this amorphous stuff around, you know, brand and heritage.

And that is why Toyota, for instance, does ads that kids think are funny because they want them to remember that when they're adults and buy a Toyota.

Oh, yeah, very good.

Yeah.

So, yeah, it was a really interesting day yesterday.

I got lots out of it.

So many speakers from a wide variety of backgrounds, service providers from the funds.

Yes, from consultants.

You've got some sessions coming up today.

What are you looking forward to?

Yes, indeed I do.

I am chairing a session on insurance claims and have things got better, which I'm sure they have since the blow up a couple of years ago.

So, yeah, we're going to be talking about that in detail, which I'm really looking forward to.

I have Keri Vogel from cbus, Jocelyn Furlan, who is a very well known consultant and was the chair, or whatever the right word is of the SCT back in the day Super Complaints Tribunal and Alison Bodenar from Ascenda.

So, yes, I think that should be an excellent session.

We've only got 40 minutes and four people with lots of ideas, although the moderator's supposed to keep their mouth shut.

So we'll see.

Good luck with that.

And you, I'm on a panel with Matthew Jose from Mayflower Consulting.

I'm joined by Duncan McPherson from Borromin Consulting and Tim from Prime Super.

And we're going to be discussing digital advice.

Yes.

So, yeah, I've been doing some research into some of the funds that I'm a member of and trying to rate their digital advice experience.

Are you giving them a value score?

I did.

I scored them.

On a scale of 1 to 10, I did five advice journeys with five different funds.

The top score was a 3 out of 10, one of them got a 2 and three of them I give a 1 out of 10.

So that was interesting.

And at the same time, OpenAI launched Personal Finance ChatGPT on Friday last week.

It's us only at the moment, but you can connect ChatGPT up to 12,000 different financial institutions in the US and begin to ask it for budgeting advice and spending advice, investment advice.

It's coming, folks.

Crazy times.

Yeah, it's coming.

So lots to discuss today as well.

I love these IRBC events.

They're really, you know, it was a packed room Yesterday with probably 60 people in the room.

I don't know, there was a few badges outside.

People hadn't shown up yet.

Maybe they're coming today, but I don't know where they would have sat.

There weren't any spare seats.

So we're going to have to expand the size of these forums.

And yeah, I'm looking forward to future events throughout the year.

We've got Engage going to be in Melbourne later this year.

Yes.

And Fund Tech, I think is coming back in October.

October.

End of October.

Yes.

Yeah, me too.

I always get a lot out of these, the great conversations.

It is a smaller room, so people do tend to put their hand up.

Not just me and Neil, other people.

Other people talk, put their hands up and put ideas up or questions or challenge the speakers.

And I think that sort of open discussion is really valuable and I always come away with lots of great ideas and new friends.

Yeah.

I'm going to see if I can use some kind of AI to make sense of my handwritten notes from yesterday.

Oh, I've done that before.

I did that after the FSC conference the other week.

I had written pages and pages of notes.

I shoved it, I took photos of them, shoved it all into Claude and then said, help me sort this out.

And it made lists straight off the bat of things I needed to action things Deb needed to action things, sort of things for later.

And then I went through it and basically told Claude as I did each thing.

I've done this now Deb doesn't need to do that.

I need to do this.

That can go over there and then for all the sort of new ideas, I got it to make some boards in Monday.com for me and load everything in.

Wow.

Yeah, wow.

Super organized.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So I'm pretty heavy.

User of the old AI, which we're not going to talk about too much because we're over it as a tool, not a lifestyle.

All right, so we better get going.

Let's get a coffee and get into it.

Definitely time for a coffee.

There's going to be lots more great sessions today, folks.

Thanks so much for joining us.

If you want to listen in, we'll do a wrap up of day two maybe tomorrow and yeah, let you know how that went as well and we'll share that with you on the next episode of that super show.

Thanks all.

See you soon.

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