Pension fund of the year 2026: What makes a winner?

SuperRatings was first cab off the rank with its 2026 awards night held on 26 November 2025, while Chant West announced its 2026 winner on 27 May 2026.

Chant West’s top accolade went to Aware Super for the third year running, while UniSuper was a close runner-up.

Aware Super also won Chant West’s overall Fund of the Year award as well as two sub-categories – member services and insurance.

Fryer says Aware Super is strongly focused on retirement. “It has high-quality investments, and its more defensive pension options are different to super, with liquid alternatives and defensive equities to provide a smoother return journey.”

Aware Super also has a strong advice offering, especially around retirement, and is one of only a handful of funds with digital advice. This includes its Retire Ready Check-in and income stream implementation services, its online MyRetirement Planner and Retirement Manager, available on phone and video.

Fryer says Aware Super’s digital advice goes beyond a calculator, allowing you to go to their website for advice about what you should do in different situations in the lead up to and after retirement, how much income you could withdraw given your objectives and the ability to select different levels of income for different stages of retirement. If your situation is more complex, you will be triaged out of the digital service and an adviser will call you.

“It also recently launched its very useful Age Pension Hub … and OSKO payments so its members receive payments almost instantly,” he says.

UniSuper was named 2026 Retirement Offering of the Year by SuperRatings for the second year running. UniSuper has also won Chant West’s top award three times in eight years.

Rappell says that while more funds are developing their online advice services to help members build their own retirement plan, UniSuper has a wider, deeper advice offering than most.

“UniSuper offers a well-rounded retirement offering which stacks up well on performance and fees,” says Rappell. It also has a lifetime income option designed to allay members’ concerns about running out of money.

UniSuper’s Lifetime Income provides guaranteed income for life, adjusted for inflation. Payments are not affected by market movements and you can choose to have your partner receive your payments when you die. A residual lump sum is payable to your estate if you (and your partner if applicable) pass away within a guaranteed period.

UniSuper was also runner-up in the Chant West awards, but its top accolade went to Aware Super for the second year running.

Aware Super also won three other Chant West award categories – Member services, Investments and Advice services.

Fryer says Aware Super is strongly focused on retirement. While its investment performance is strong overall, he says its more defensive pension options are different to super, with some liquid alternatives and defensive equities to provide a smoother return journey better suited to pension members.

Aware also has a strong advice offering around retirement, with intra-fund advice over the phone and comprehensive advice through a team of about 70 in-house advisers.

The table below lists the best pension funds for the past nine years, as awarded by Chant West and SuperRatings. As you can see, the pension fund plaudits over that period have gone mostly to industry funds, with the exception of corporate fund TelstraSuper, which finalised its merger with Aware Super in May this year.

Apart from TelstraSuper, three funds – Aware Super, UniSuper and Australian Retirement Trust (ART) – have been out-and-out champions in the pension space. (QSuper and Sunsuper, both previous winners, merged to form the Australian Retirement Trust.)

Sources: Chant West and SuperRatings
*Now part of Australian Retirement Trust

Prior to the 2026 awards, QSuper had won the top award six times. Rappell says innovation in the pension space has been disappointing overall, given the large numbers of members entering retirement phase.

However, this is slowly changing. As an indication of where innovation is happening, AMP took out three of Chant West’s sub-category awards – AMP MyNorth Lifetime (for the third year running), which Fryer describes as the most sophisticated of the current offerings, AMP MyNorth for advised product and AMP Super for digital advice.

AMP was also a runner-up in the innovation category and in the week before the awards night, it released Lifetime Pension in AMP Super. This works like MyNorth and is fully integrated into AMP Super’s digital advice and phone-based advice services, making it easy for members to get help deciding whether this product could work for them.

Fryer expects the number of funds offering lifetime income pensions could double over the next 18 months, driven into action by Treasury’s best practice principles that insist funds offer a lifetime product with favourable Age Pension treatment. These products are important in addressing members’ fears about running out of money as well as potentially providing retirees with middling super balances access to more, or some, Age Pension. 

He says several platforms are planning to follow the example of AMP and MLC, which also have a lifetime product on their platform. While in the industry fund sector, AustralianSuper and Brighter Super are well advanced with planned product launches.

The bottom line

Choosing a pension fund that offers the best retirement outcome for your personal circumstances and preferences is every bit as important as choosing the right super fund; perhaps more so.

The annual pension fund/retirement offering awards are a great way to check what the best funds are doing right at a particular point in time in terms of products and member services, but your search shouldn’t end there.

Over the next few years, more funds are expected to launch innovative pension products that reduce the risk of outliving your savings, or provide more flexibility around how you withdraw income, so when retirement beckons it’s important to compare pension funds.