Opinion
Bec WilsonMoney contributor
October 3, 2026 — 5:00am
October 3, 2026 — 5:00am
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For most of your working life, judging your super fund has been pretty straightforward. You benchmark its performance over 10 years and you check that its fees over the same period aren’t outrageous – and from that you can tell almost everything you need to know.
Because, for the first half of your working life, you probably don’t need to talk to your super fund very often. You need it to invest your money well and not charge you too much for doing it.
Our super system has traditionally been much better at helping Australians accumulate money than it has been at helping them spend it on their retirements.Michael Howard
But as you get closer to retirement, the job you need your super fund to do changes dramatically. And suddenly, good investment returns and low fees aren’t enough.
You need your fund to help you work out how to turn that big pool of savings into an income you can actually live on. You need to know how much you can safely draw down, and how the age pension might fit into your plans. You might want to consider whether your money should be invested in a product that offers you an income for life, and whether you should invest differently now that you’re spending rather than saving.
And when you go looking for help making those decisions, chances are you’ll start with the super fund you’ve been paying to invest your money all your working life.
Which raises a pretty important question: is your super fund actually any good at retirement?
As you get closer to retirement, the job you need your super fund to do changes dramatically. And suddenly, good investment returns and low fees aren’t enough.
The problem is, our super system has traditionally been much better at helping Australians accumulate money than it has been at helping them spend it upon their retirements. Regulators have known this for years. In 2022 they brought in legislation called the Retirement Income Covenant that required super funds to have a strategy for helping members who are approaching and living in retirement. In 2023 APRA and ASIC found there was still a “lack of progress and insufficient urgency” among funds for helping their members retire and spend their super. By late 2025, regulators were saying that increasingly there’s a gap opening up between funds that are genuinely investing in better retirement outcomes and those doing little more than complying with the rules.
But how would ordinary people know the difference? Particularly when some funds spend big bucks on advertising that they “do retirement”, while others spend the money building seriously good retirement services, products and advice.
So last year I decided to give consumers a way to tell the difference. I partnered with one of the country’s leading superannuation research teams, Chant West, and together we created the Epic Retirement Tick.
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The idea was pretty simple: we wanted to give consumers a way to identify the super funds that were truly doing a good job of helping their members retire, and to show the rest of the industry what they should be aiming for.
So we made the criteria public, showed each of the funds exactly what we would be assessing them against, and invited them to step up and deliver.
In 2025, its first year, we assessed funds against 18 criteria, covering everything from retirement investment products and income options to advice, education, calculators, digital services and how quickly someone answers the phone.
Only six funds met the standard in year one. Then, this year, we made it harder.
We expanded the assessment from 18 criteria to 20 and lifted the pass mark from 12 to 14. We dropped three criteria, added five new ones – including cybersecurity and complaints handling – and we raised our expectations in areas like lifetime income products, advice, retirement education and the tools funds provide to help people work out how to spend their super.
And the results are in. Of the 45 regulated super funds who were all assessed, only eight funds have earned the Epic Retirement Tick for 2026/27: AMP Super, Australian Retirement Trust – Super Savings, Aware Super, Brighter Super, Colonial First State – FirstChoice, Hostplus, UniSuper, and Vision Super.
Of the 45 regulated super funds who were all assessed, only eight funds have earned the Epic Retirement Tick.Illustration: Matt Davidson
Three are new to the list this year: AMP Super, Colonial First State – FirstChoice, and Vision Super. It’s the first time retail funds have held a tick.
And here’s the really cool bit: we made it harder and more funds passed. More importantly, across the board, more funds are doing more for their members. Public scrutiny, public discussion and maybe the fear of public shame seem to be working.
More funds have introduced retirement bonuses, handing back the tax they’d preserved for members when they move into retirement, rather than retaining that value for the fund. More are offering excellent retirement calculators designed to guide people into retirement, and others for the period after retirement, too. There’s more education around the Age Pension. Retirement education itself is improving, too, with funds moving away from walls of boring text towards videos and charts, webinars, courses and other tools that people might actually see, use and learn from.
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Advice is improving, particularly among the retail funds – both digital advice and over-the-phone advice. Call-centre waiting times have come down significantly. Complaints handling has improved, too. And funds are putting more effort into protecting their retirement accounts from cybercrime.
This is exactly what sunlight does – it disinfects.
When consumers can see what good retirement service looks like, they can start asking why their own fund isn’t doing it. And when funds can see exactly what their competitors are offering, being behind becomes a lot harder to ignore.
So if you’re reading this and your fund got a tick: celebrate it. Look at the retirement services, products and tools on offer and make good use of them. And be proud of its efforts to build its retirement proposition.
And if your super fund doesn’t have a tick, don’t panic. Super is a long-term investment and this isn’t a reason to rush out and switch funds. It is, however, an excellent reason to start asking your fund hard questions.
Ask it why it didn’t get the Tick. They all know it exists and they were all assessed. Send yours an email. Ask it what it’s doing to help you retire.
Does it have investment options designed specifically for retirees? Can it help you work out how much income you can draw down? What advice can you access and how much will it cost? What tools does it have that will help you understand how your super and the Age Pension might work together? Does it offer an income-for-life option, and education and advice to help you explore it? And what is it doing to help protect your retirement savings from cybercrime?
You’ve spent decades paying your super fund to help you build the money for your retirement. It’s perfectly reasonable to expect it to be pretty good at helping you retire. After all, that’s the whole point of super: to help Australians fund a dignified retirement.
Bec Wilson is author of the bestseller How to Have an Epic Retirement and the newly released Prime Time: 27 Lessons for the New Midlife. She writes a weekly newsletter at epicretirement.net and hosts the Prime Time podcast.
Advice given in this article is general in nature and is not intended to influence readers’ decisions about investing or financial products. They should always seek their own professional advice that takes into account their own personal circumstances before making any financial decisions.
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Bec Wilson is the author of How To Have An Epic Retirement and writes a weekly newsletter for pre- and post-retirees at epicretirement.net.From our partners