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May 30, 2026 — 5:01am
The federal budget on May 12 made superannuation the most compelling place to build wealth in Australia, and not because of anything it did to super directly. It’s what it did to everything else.
The reduction in the CGT discount on investments held outside super has fundamentally shifted the maths on wealth building. Shares, investment properties and managed funds in your own name just became considerably less tax-efficient than they were. Super has been crowned the winner.
Which makes what I’m about to tell you either really exciting or mildly embarrassing, depending on how you look at it.
Most Australians are barely using their super fund before they retire. Sure, their employer deposits the 12 per cent contribution. But after that, people largely ignore them, sitting in a default investment option they set years ago and never reviewed, paying for services they have never accessed and leaving advice on the table they’ve already paid for.
The fund is doing the work. The member is nowhere to be seen. And if they did pay attention they would realise they can squeeze more juice out.
Once a year, superannuation research firm Chant West sends its researchers into super funds and interrogates them for weeks. It’s not a tick-box survey or a marketing submission where everyone gets a ribbon, but a forensic examination of what funds are building and delivering for members across every dimension of service.
Your super fund is working hard for you. The question is whether you’re working with it.
It’s primarily an industry exercise recognising genuine excellence, but it gives the rest of us a remarkably useful window into what the leading funds are doing and, more importantly, what you should be looking for in your own fund.
I was at the awards this year, donned a frock, sat among 300 industry people and watched each winner announced to a room that really did care about the result. Here’s what the best funds are building, and what you should use.
Digital advice: the financial planner living inside your phone
Forget booking an appointment and waiting three weeks for a document you half already knew the answer to. The best super funds have built legally valid, personalised financial advice living directly inside their apps, calibrated to your actual account, your actual balance, your actual life.
These tools assess your risk tolerance, tell you what investment option suits you now, flag whether your insurance still makes sense and tell you whether your contributions are on track. No appointment, no extra fee, available at 11 o’clock on a Tuesday night. And when you want a human, the best funds back their digital tools with advisers who pick up the phone.
AMP Super won best fund for digital advice, for a powerful tool that delivers it all and recommends the optimal split between an account-based pension and lifetime pension to maximise income to age 95.
Aware Super was the other finalist, with its retirement manager calculating your maximum sustainable income and giving you an income confidence score built from your real numbers.
Whether your fund is on that list or not, open your app this week and try the digital tools your fund offers. Make your own decision on whether it’s headed in the right direction.
Investments: the thing everyone watches but most people misread
Most people check last year’s returns, feel vaguely reassured or anxious, and move on. Neither reaction is useful. What actually matters is strong 10-year returns at your specific risk level (balanced, growth, high growth) because that’s what tells you whether your fund’s investment team is truly skilled or just riding a wave everyone else was riding too.
The compounding cost of getting this wrong is brutal. The same $250,000 in a fund returning 5.5 per cent versus 8.5 per cent after fees produces a gap of nearly $300,000 over 15 years.
Hostplus won best fund for investments, built on a deliberate long-term strategy of investing heavily in unlisted assets that has delivered consistently strong returns with a smoother ride than most.
They have a younger member base than most, allowing them to invest for the very long term. Is your fund investing for the long term well? Check your 10-year returns against the median for your investment option at ato.gov.au and find out.
Member services: the real battleground to care about
For years super funds competed on returns and fees. That still matters, but the real competition has shifted to something more fundamental: what actually happens when you need your fund to show up for you.
Aware Super winning super fund of the year, pension fund of the year, best fund for member services and best fund for insurance in the same year is not a coincidence. It reflects a fund investing seriously across every dimension of the member experience simultaneously.
It starts with your money moving when you need it. Aware Super rolled out Osko payments this month, meaning members now receive same-day withdrawals from their retirement phase account. When this is your income, same day versus three days (or sometimes more) is the difference between a fund that understands retirement and one that doesn’t.
Then there is cybersecurity, which gets far too little attention from members and far too much from criminals. As balances grow and more Australians make regular withdrawals, super accounts have become an increasingly attractive fraud target.
UniSuper introduced passkeys and strengthened multifactor authentication, and 34,000 members already use them.
Then there is what happens when life gets genuinely hard. Aware Super now processes death claims up to $75,000 entirely over the phone with only a death certificate required. That is a fund that has thought carefully about what grief actually feels like.
And then there are the nudges, little prompts encouraging you to review your super, get advice, boost contributions and plan for retirement. If your fund isn’t proactively helping you make better decisions, they might prefer you don’t look too closely.
Aware Super and UniSuper were the top two funds for member services this year. Is your fund serving you this well?
Lifetime income products
Research consistently shows retirees underspend, not because they’re reckless but because they’re terrified of outliving their money. They draw the minimum pension, live more carefully than they need to, and shortchange themselves throughout retirement out of fear.
Lifetime income products solve this by providing a guaranteed income stream for as long as you live. AMP MyNorth Lifetime won best fund for lifetime product, and the numbers are compelling: members who take up the product have 60 per cent higher average incomes because lifetime income rates, higher age pension entitlement and the confidence to draw down more freely entirely changes the retirement spending picture.
If you’re within 10 years of retirement and haven’t explored whether a lifetime income product belongs in your strategy, start that conversation with your fund’s advice team now.
Intra-fund advice: the adviser you’re already paying for
Your super fund almost certainly employs qualified financial advisers whose job is to help you make better decisions, and their baseline service is already included in your annual member fee whether you use it or not. Investment options, insurance, contributions strategy and retirement planning, often at little or no extra cost.
Brighter Super won best fund for advice services, and Australian Retirement Trust and Aware Super rounded out the top three. All received the Epic Retirement Tick last year, too.
To give you a cost benchmark, Brighter Super offers full retirement advice including an age pension estimate for $990, with a partner included for an extra $500.
These are the products and services you see, feel and can use to actively grow your own wealth. So pick one thing from this list that you’ve been ignoring and do it this week. Book the advice appointment. Open the digital advice tool. Check your 10-year returns.
Your super fund is working hard for you. The question is whether you’re working with it because there’s a lot more juice in there than most people ever bother to squeeze out.
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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