Australian Securities and Investments Commission Commissioner Simone Constant warned in remarks to the Conexus Retirement Leaders’ Summit that the gap between leading and lagging superannuation trustees is widening. She called on trustees to treat retirement and member services as whole-of-business responsibilities, with governance, capabilities and operations scaled to their growing size and systemic importance. Despite regulatory scrutiny, the proportion of death benefit claims paid within six months improved by only 3%, while an ongoing review found that nearly a quarter of trustees do not regularly analyze complaints to detect systemic issues, despite this being an enforceable requirement. Trustees are expected to use member and operational data to improve retirement communications, claims handling and risk detection rather than rely on manual monitoring. ASIC’s recent work found weaknesses including ineffective fee caps and delayed responses to suspicious activity, although stronger performers demonstrated that rapid investigation, fee suspension and remediation are possible. Constant also urged trustees to benchmark against global and cross-industry best practice and reiterated that private credit investments require appropriate valuations, effective liquidity risk management and accurate, transparent member disclosures, including where investment services are outsourced.

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