ASIC is urging superannuation trustees to take accountability for blind spots in their oversight of issues arising from member complaints after a review identified concerning weaknesses that could expose Australians to avoidable harm.

ASIC Commissioner Simone Constant said findings detailed in Report 844 Lessons to be learned: How trustees use insights from superannuation complaints (REP 844) suggest too many trustees are failing to treat complaints as an early warning signal for service failures affecting members.

'Complaints are the canary in the coalmine for trustees warning them about issues affecting their members, such as service delays, payment errors, communications failures, or breakdowns in processes, even fraud and misconduct,’ Commissioner Constant said.

‘When trustees fail to learn from their complaints, small problems left unidentified, unattended or unresolved can snowball into widespread failures that expose members to harm and erode trust in the superannuation system. Complaints are the voices of the funds’ customers trying to talk to their trustees. Super funds must listen to what complaints are telling them.’

ASIC’s inquiries of all of industry found close to one quarter of trustees were not analysing complaints data to identify systemic issues on a regular basis, despite this being an enforceable requirement under ASIC’s internal dispute resolution (IDR) standards.

More than half of trustees reviewed across industry (24 out of 45) identified fewer than five systemic issues from complaints over a two-year period. Of these, 14 trustees failed to identify a single issue.

'We see low levels of systemic issue identification as a potential red flag, not evidence of better performance, even more so where trustees have high complaint volumes or large member bases. Just because trustees don’t identify broader problems affecting their members doesn't mean they aren’t there,' Commissioner Constant said.

‘Alarmingly, the Australian Financial Complaints Authority appears better at picking up issues than industry. When comparing the two years of data we collected, AFCA identified systemic issues from superannuation complaints it received at almost twice the rate all trustees identified from the complaints they received.'

ASIC also found several trustees subject to our in-depth review too readily attributed the root cause of complaints to members, including members’ expectations, awareness or error.

‘Blaming the customer is not a complaints strategy. Trustees need to look behind the complaint and ask whether poor communication, unclear processes, delays or system failures are driving member dissatisfaction,’ Commissioner Constant said.

‘If a member cannot access their benefit payment, cannot get a timely response, or doesn’t receive the support they are entitled to or the services they are paying for, the consequences can be serious. These are not abstract governance issues; they affect people’s lives and the retirement savings they have worked hard to build.’

Maintaining effective IDR arrangements, including identifying and responding to systemic issues from complaints, is an enforceable obligation.

Commissioner Constant said the findings raise serious questions about whether trustees have the systems, culture and governance needed to detect member harm early.

‘Superannuation trustees manage $3.4 trillion in Australians’ retirement savings. Members are entitled to expect that when someone complains, trustees are not only resolving the individual dispute, but asking the harder question: are the same things going wrong for other members?’ Commissioner Constant said.

‘We have seen it time and time again in our work from fees for no service issues, to failures to pay timely death benefits and provide other critical services, to signs of fraud and misconduct. A trustee that does not effectively analyse complaints data or the true cause of complaints, does not escalate possible systemic issues from complaints, or does not quickly fix the broader issues they do pick up, is letting their members down and opening themselves up to further scrutiny by ASIC and, far worse, further failing of their members.’

ASIC is warning trustees to promptly review the findings and recommended actions outlined in REP 844 and implement timely improvements to ensure they comply with their obligations.

‘The message to trustees is simple: take ownership. If your arrangements to learn from complaints are not fit for purpose, fix them now. If you need further assurance or external support to meet ASIC’s requirements, get it,’ Commissioner Constant said.

‘ASIC will continue to focus on member service concerns. Where trustees fail to act on weaknesses and members are exposed to harm, we will consider the full range of regulatory responses available to us. We are already looking at what we have learned in this review to help us shape and target our next because member services that live up to the promises of superannuation are increasingly important to every Australian.’

Background

Supporting better retirement outcomes and improving superannuation member services remain key priorities for ASIC.

The work covered by REP 844 forms part of ASIC’s broader review into member services. It focused on how trustees use complaints to detect and address systemic issues and improve services for members. ASIC collected information to compare all 45 trustees ASIC regulates on select matters, and completed a deeper review of a sub-set of 10 trustees. A full list of the trustees (and their funds) that were reviewed is available in the report.

REP 844 follows earlier work on member services looking at death benefit claims handling, which showed that warning signs were often visible in complaints before problems became widespread, but not always acted on effectively by trustees.

Since 5 October 2021, trustees have been required to maintain internal dispute resolution arrangements that meet ASIC’s standards in RG 271, including requirements to record data on all complaints, analyse complaints data to identify systemic issues and escalate possible systemic issues for timely investigation and rectification.

ASIC has taken enforcement action against three superannuation trustees for alleged member services failures.

Last November, the Federal Court ordered Construction and Building Unions Superannuation Fund (Cbus) to pay a penalty of $23.5 million (25-286MR) after ASIC sued the trustee for unreasonable delays experienced by more than 7,000 Australians in handling death benefits and total and permanent disability (TPD) insurance claims.

In March 2025, ASIC commenced civil penalty proceedings against AustralianSuper alleging delays in processing of death benefit claims (25-034MR).

In May 2026, the Federal Court also found that Telstra Super (now known as Tetra Servicing Pty Ltd) failed to comply with its internal dispute resolution procedures (26-091MR) after ASIC took action for failures to respond to about one third of the relevant complaints made between 22 October 2021 and 13 January 2023 within the mandatory 45-day timeline. In about 30% of those cases, Telstra Super provided its response more than 100 days after it had received the complaint.

Downloads

• Report 844 Lessons to be learned: How trustees use insights from superannuation complaints (REP 844)
• Regulatory Guide 271 Internal dispute resolution (RG 271)
• Report 831 Delivering on death benefits: Have super trustees stepped up? (REP 831)
• Report 806 Taking ownership of death benefits: How trustees can deliver outcomes Australians deserve (REP 806)