The Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) has accused platforms that manage Australians’ superannuation savings of an “alarming” lack of safeguards.
The corporate watchdog is concerned that super trustees are failing to monitor harmful advice fee deductions, unusual fees, investment patterns and high-risk pension transition activities.
“All superannuation fund trustees must immediately review and consider areas for improvement before the risks escalate into serious harm to Australians and their hard-earned superannuation savings,” said ASIC Commissioner Simone Constant.
The commissioner wrote a detailed 29-page report entitled “Protecting super: How well are platform trustees monitoring risks to pensions”.
It comes after the high-profile collapse of Shield and First Guardian, which cost more than 11,000 Australians nearly $1 billion in their pension savings.
Code blue for a few bad apples
ASIC examined six platform trustees with $300 billion in pension savings, representing around three-quarters of the total funds managed by the platform trustees.
It identified several areas that required “immediate attention” from trustees, including persistent gaps in the control of advice fees, which in some cases had worsened over the past two years.
One trustee proposed capping fees at $30,000, well above the limits set by ASIC.
The size of pension trustees has grown significantly over the past 10 years. (Included: Pexels)
The corporate watchdog also wants attention to be paid to limited advice checks, “with half of trustees reporting that they had not carried out any checks for at least one month during the ASIC review period,” the report said.
The report found that “insufficient attention is paid to understanding the business models of advisory licensees, including whether they use lead generators or other third-party referral sources.”
ASIC also wants trustees to address “inadequate monitoring of key risk indicators such as member churn, fee structures, holding limits and unusual fund flows”.
“(Our) message is: Trustees, do your job. Save money, provide value for money”
– said Mrs. Constant.
“But our message is also for Australians: superannuation is now so important to almost every working Australian that we encourage Australians to work with their supers in the same way they do with their banks.”
Superplatforms manage almost $400 billion.
Retirement platforms have experienced incredible growth.
In the 10 years leading up to June 2025, payouts to platform participants more than tripled, from $123 billion to $396 billion, compared with a sector that more than doubled in size.
Advisory fees charged by pension platforms have quadrupled to $2.2 billion. (ABC)
Over the same period, advisory fees charged by retirement platforms quadrupled to $2.2 billion.
“The four-and-a-half trillion-dollar superannuation sector is a great asset for Australia and a great asset for Australians,” Ms Constant told The Business.
“But to be such a valuable asset, it has to be done well, and that’s why we do the work we do.”
Collapse of the Shield and the First Guardian
Attention to security measures has been focused following the collapse of First Guardian and Shield, which ASIC previously described as “industrial-scale misconduct”.
The corporate watchdog froze Shield’s assets in June 2024 and First Guardian’s assets in February 2025.
However, these actions followed shortly after the corporate watchdog received reports of alleged violations dating back to January 2021.
The government plans to tighten the investment scheme after the collapse of large funds
“This work that we’re doing here, this work that we proposed, and we did similar work two years ago, and we’ll be doing more work again to continue to shine a light on it,” Ms. Constant said.
“This gets to the heart of these issues: ensuring members are protected from these egregious no-service fees, making sure flags are raised when harmful switching occurs, as we saw in the middle of the Shield and First Guardian results, and making sure those member funds are properly held in trust and not destroyed.”
While ASIC is clear that many individual superannuation trustees are doing the right thing, “we look at the data and the results,” Ms Constant said.
“And as you say in the report that we have about our trustees, are these platform trustees doing what is required by law to ensure the safety of these funds?
“There are clear failures.”
Young Australians turn to social media for advice
Coupled with a lack of assurance, some Australians are receiving misinformation about superannuation from inappropriate sources.
Research from the Association of Superannuation Funds of Australia (ASFA) shows that people aged 18 to 34 are 10 times more likely than people over 65 to turn to social media for information about retirement.
Mary Delahunty says some young people are using social media to get advice about their retirement savings. (Supplied by: ASFA)
This is despite social media being ranked as the least reliable source of superannuation information for Australians.
ASFA chief executive Mary Delahanty says the findings show that the current system setup does not ensure advice reaches those who need it, and that the problem is access to advice rather than its reliability.
“Australians know which sources of pension information they can rely on,” Ms Delahanty said.
“The problem is that the sources they trust the most are often the hardest for them to reach.
“Barriers such as the cost of accessing an adviser outside of super funds and restrictions on the scope of advice super fund advisers can provide are really stopping people from getting the reliable information they need.”
ASFA’s research also points to structural problems in the financial advice market.
The number of licensed financial advisers is about 40 per cent lower than a decade ago, and the number of Australians with a super account has increased by about 20 per cent over the same period.