This report provides an independent, sector-wide review of how APRA-regulated superannuation trustees are responding to the Retirement Income Covenant (Covenant).
It benchmarks 80 funds across key characteristics such as strategic alignment, member segmentation, assistance to members, governance maturity, and innovation in product and advice offerings.
The findings reveal significant variability in compliance, strategy maturity, and member focus—highlighting both encouraging progress and persistent gaps.
Encouragingly, 30 funds demonstrated, through their summaries, a strong alignment with the requirements and policy objectives of the Covenant. However, a sizeable proportion of the summaries lack specificity, detail and meaningful engagement (including the failure to publish a summary at all), suggesting minimal strategic alignment with the Covenant requirements. This may indicate insufficient prioritisation in strategy implementation or there may be a disconnect between the strategy development and articulation of it to members.
The benefit of scale is evident in the findings, with larger funds generally producing more comprehensive and strategically aligned retirement income strategy summaries. In contrast, smaller funds were more likely to adopt minimal, compliance-focused approaches.
While the industry as a whole is showing an increasing understanding of the complexities of retirement, challenges remain for trustees in meeting the diverse and evolving needs of a growing number of members approaching or entering the retirement phase of superannuation.
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