Australian Prudential Regulation Authority outlines superannuation priorities as geopolitical readiness assessments get underway

Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA) Deputy Chair David Bradbury outlined priorities for retirement services, operational resilience and investment governance in a speech to the 2026 FSC Retirement Summit in Sydney. He confirmed that targeted geopolitical readiness assessments are underway across superannuation, banking and general insurance. With around 2.5 million Australians expected to retire over the next decade, Bradbury emphasized that funds need to adapt from helping members accumulate savings to helping them use those savings sustainably. The readiness exercise includes 12 of the largest superannuation trustees and initially tests whether existing arrangements can support an effective response to a severe but plausible geopolitical shock. Participating entities must submit plans to address material gaps by the end of April 2027 and provide evidence that crisis preparedness gaps have been closed by the end of November 2027. Later phases will examine personnel and political risk. Bradbury also stressed the potential for cyber vulnerabilities and increasingly sophisticated attacks using artificial intelligence to cause catastrophic member losses. Trustees remain individually responsible for protection, while shared service dependencies require coordinated prevention, testing and recovery. He encouraged industry to identify regulatory settings that might discourage necessary resilience investment. On investment governance, Bradbury reiterated the case for reforms proposed in September, rather than announcing a new package. Material weaknesses persist despite supervisory and enforcement action, with the Shield and First Guardian collapses illustrating the consequences of concentrated exposure to unsuitable investments. The proposals would require trustees to enforce investment limits for individual members using higher risk options, strengthen conflict management and match oversight resources to their investment offerings. They would also tighten expectations across investment selection, monitoring and remediation. All trustee business models would be affected, with the greatest impact expected for platform trustees because of their complex investment menus and reliance on third parties.