Australia’s corporate watchdog has warned superannuation trustees to tighten controls over retirement savings, citing a “troubling” lack of safeguards in how platforms monitor advice fees and investment switching.
The Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) reviewed six platform trustees managing $300 billion in retirement savings — about three-quarters of the total funds handled by such trustees — and identified several areas requiring “immediate attention.”
In a 29-page report titled Safeguarding super: How well are platform trustees monitoring risks to retirement savings, ASIC Commissioner Simone Constant said all trustees should “immediately review and consider areas for improvement before risks translate to serious harms for Australians and their hard-earned retirement savings.”
The review found persistent gaps in advice fee controls, with some cases regressing over the past two years. One trustee proposed a fee cap of $30,000, which ASIC said was well beyond caps identified in the review.
ASIC also reported that half of the trustees said they did not conduct checks on advice documents for at least one month during the review period. The regulator flagged “insufficient focus on understanding the advice licensees’ business models, including whether they use lead generators or other third-party referral sources.”
Trustees were also urged to improve monitoring of key risk indicators such as member churn, fee patterns, holding limits, and unusual fund flows.
The warning follows the high-profile collapse of the Shield and First Guardian managed investment schemes, which cost more than 11,000 Australians about $1 billion in retirement savings. ASIC has taken legal action against financial advisers involved in those schemes.
The report comes amid a broader shift of retirement savings from retail funds into self-managed super funds (SMSFs) and less-regulated managed investment schemes — a trend that has regulators concerned.
Australia’s total superannuation assets have more than doubled over the past decade to about $4.4 trillion, including more than $3 trillion overseen by the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA). More than $1 trillion now sits in self-managed funds, which fall outside APRA’s remit, leaving ASIC as the sole investment watchdog for those consumers.
Super platform member benefits have also grown sharply, more than tripling from $123 billion in June 2015 to $396 billion in June 2025, according to figures cited in the review. Advice fees charged by super platforms have increased more than fourfold over the same period, to $2.2 billion.
The review’s findings underscore the pressure on trustees to keep pace with the rapid growth in retirement savings and the increasingly complex advice landscape.