Which super funds offer income for life?

It’s generally suggested that longevity products work best alongside an account-based pension and the Age Pension, rather than as a standalone retirement income solution.

While a full or part Age Pension should cover some of the basic costs of daily living, allocating some of your retirement savings to a longevity product or annuity gives the added peace of mind that comes from knowing you will always be able to cover the essentials.

The remainder of your retirement savings can then be allocated to an account-based pension or self-managed investments to pay for discretionary spending. In the early active years of retirement, this might include travel, eating out and more expensive leisure activities.

Who do they suit?

Despite the appeal of a guaranteed income for life, longevity products are not for everyone.

In 2023 (the most recent figures), half of all female retirees had less than $190,850 in super at retirement, while half of all men had less than $310,326, limiting their retirement income options. People with less than $100,000 in super at retirement are more likely to withdraw it as a lump sum, to repay debts, buy a car or campervan, or carry out home maintenance. At the other end of the income scale, wealthy people already have enough assets to support their retirement lifestyle into a ripe old age.

It’s the middle group of retirees with savings of between $320,000 (where the Age Pension assets test cuts in for a single homeowner) and up to $1.5 million who are most likely to benefit from a lifetime income retirement product.

The Age Pension assets test currently phases out at $714,500 for a single homeowner. Some retirees with more than this amount, who would otherwise be totally self-funded, may find a lifetime income product gives them access to a part pension and related benefits, because only 60% of their assets would be assessed under the pension assets test. These aren’t hard and fast cut offs, but simply a rough guide. Everyone needs to work out their own retirement income needs and how best to meet them. 

A report by the Grattan Institute argued that retirees should be encouraged to allocate 80% of their super balance above $250,000 to an annuity, and that this could boost retirement incomes by up to 25%. 

So what longevity products are currently on offer from superannuation funds? It’s a small but growing field.

What’s on offer from retail funds?

While all big super funds are aware of the need for retirement products that address the need for an income for life, the availability of such products is patchy at best.

According to Treasury, only 3.5% of assets held in super pension accounts are in annuities, compared with 84% in account-based pensions. In fact, the only retirement products offered by most super funds are account-based pensions and transition-to-retirement pensions.

There are two longstanding providers of annuities in Australia: Challenger and AIA (now part of Resolution Life), with Challenger the clear market leader. Investment bond specialist, Generation Life and insurers Allianz and TAL have also entered the market (see below), although TAL is focused on partnering with others.

TAL has announced partnerships with AMP, Challenger, MLC, Australian Super and Brighter Super. At the time of writing, none of these have hit the market. 

Most retail super platforms offer some sort of annuity, generally a Challenger product and/or one of the other providers mentioned above. CFS FirstChoice, Netwealth, BT Panorama and HUB 24 all offer such annuities.

But innovation is happening. Traditional annuities generally invest in conservative fixed-interest investments with payments indexed to inflation, the Reserve Bank cash rate or fixed for life. But a new breed of products combines income for life with market-linked investments, with the potential to generate higher income when markets rise and less when they fall. While markets can be volatile, in the long run payments should rise.

Some of these products include:

• Challenger’s Liquid Lifetime Annuity offers income for life, with payments that can be fixed or linked to changes in inflation, the Reserve Bank cash rate or investment markets. It also offers access to lump sum withdrawals and binding death benefit payments to beneficiaries.
• AMP’s MyNorth Lifetime Income account (developed internally by AMP) can be attached to any of AMP’s hundreds of investment options. It offers investment choice and a market-linked income stream topped up with an annual bonus that rises each year, so your money never runs out. There is also a MyNorth Lifetime Super account you can open before you retire that will treat more of your lifetime products as exempt from the Age Pension assets test. This potentially gives people access to more Age Pension and the confidence to draw down more of their account-based pension in retirement.
• Allianz Guaranteed Income for Life (AGILE) offers market-linked returns with downside protection, a known lifetime income rate with guaranteed increases every year you wait to start your income. Withdrawals are permitted and death benefits can be paid to your spouse.
• Generation Life’s first annuity-style product, LifeIncome, in partnership with Optimum Pensions. LifeIncome offers income for life combined with the flexibility to select and switch between market-linked investment options. More recently, Generation Life has partnered with BlackRock, bringing the global fund manager’s underlying strength in investments, technology and tools to complement Generation Life’s existing product framework. There are also plans to partner with super funds to make the product available to their members directly or as a white-label option tailored to their members’ needs. 

“Over the next two years, we expect new retirement-focused investment options, enhanced product features, retirement optimisation tools, expanded education materials on lifetime income, and the ability to integrate LifeIncome with a super fund’s account-based pension,” says Fryer. 

As these are complex products, they are generally available through an adviser only. Fryer believes this is a smart move as most people will need help to work out if the product is for them, how much to invest and how it might fit in with their overall retirement income plan.

What’s on offer from industry funds?

Despite lots of talk, as of January 2026, there are fewer industry funds actively promoting lifetime pension products than there were two years ago. Over this period, seven have dwindled to two, due to mergers and/or a low take-up of Challenger products from fund members. 

The two remaining industry funds with lifetime income products are Australian Retirement Trust (ART) and UniSuper, with no new products coming to market in the past two years. 

The highest-profile disappearing act is TelstraSuper’s RetireAccess Lifetime Pension (in partnership with Challenger). As part of its merger process with Aware Super, TelstraSuper closed its Lifetime Pension and transferred members to the Challenger equivalent on 29 January 2026. 

Australia’s biggest super fund, AustralianSuper, announced in 2024 that it had partnered with life insurer TAL to develop an income-for-life retirement product, but a planned 2025 launch has been delayed, with 2027 now considered likely.

Of those that remain, 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.

However, it was the launch of QSuper’s Lifetime Pension in March 2021 that set the benchmark for longevity products in the industry fund sector. (QSuper merged with SunSuper in 2022 to form Australian Retirement Trust.) It was the first to combine income for life with an allocation to growth assets to allow the income payments to grow over time. Unlike most funds, which team up with an insurance company to provide the lifetime guarantee, QSuper insures internally using a pool arrangement with ART.

QSuper/ART Lifetime Pension has been a regular winner of the ChantWest and SuperRatings annual pension fund of the year and longevity product of the year awards, along with UniSuper, Aware Super, TelstraSuper and AMP My North Lifetime.

What’s more, ART and UniSuper were the only funds offering a lifetime income product to receive the inaugural Epic Retirement Tick. Six funds received the overall tick (reduced to five after the TelstraSuper merger with Aware Super). 

Worked example

Walter is aged 67, single, owns his home and plans to retire next year. He has $550,000 in super and $150,000 in other assets, such as his car and household contents. He has no other sources of income.

As he has total assets of $700,000, he would ordinarily not receive any Age Pension. However, Walter decides to purchase an ART Lifetime Pension for $250,000 and open a traditional account-based pension with the remaining $300,000.

As the Lifetime Pension purchase amount is assessed for the Age Pension assets test at 60% of the purchase price, this will result in a lower assessable asset value. Walter will not only receive fortnightly payments for the rest of his life, but he is now also eligible for the Age Pension and the much-prized Commonwealth Pensioner Concession Card.

Walter’s total income before and after the purchase of an ART Lifetime Pension

Source: ART
*Income based on withdrawal rate of 5%
**Payments based on the 2025–26 financial year, single option
***Age Pension income estimate based on income and assets tests as at 20 March 2025.

As a result of the reduction in assessable assets, Walter’s Age Pension entitlement has increased from nil to $7,566 per year, and his total annual income has increased by $13,366 to $40,866.

For an estimate of how much retirement income you could earn with a longevity product, or a combination of an account-based pension and a longevity product, try out the QSuper/ART calculator and/or the Challenger Retire with Confidence Tool. As the design of the products and the underlying assumptions differ, the annual retirement income for the same initial outlay will also be different.

The outlook for longevity products

In 2026, most of the action in terms of longevity product launches is in the retail sector. 

In the next few months, Fryer says MLC is expected to launch a new pension product called Retirement Boost. 

Also in 2026, AMP is expected to launch AMP Signature Super, similar to AMP MyNorth but available through its super fund, rather than its platform.

Yet the consensus in industry and government circles is that progress in launching lifetime income products is way too slow. In the funds’ defence, Fryer says these are complex products that will be on a super fund’s books until the last member passes away, so it’s important to get things right. Even so, he would like to see more movement. 

It has long been recognised that super funds need to pay more attention to the retirement phase of super after decades of focus on the accumulation phase, when members are saving for retirement. And there is unquestionably pent-up demand from retirees for pension products that offer the certainty of knowing that their money won’t run out. 

That’s the carrot. The regulatory stick came in 2022 with the introduction of the Retirement Income Covenant. This requires trustees to consider the needs and preferences of members and ensure retirees have greater choice in how they withdraw their super benefits in retirement. 

But choice can be a double-edged sword, as many recent studies in behavioural finance have pointed out. Unlike the accumulation phase, where default super options are available for people who don’t choose a fund, there are no retirement default funds. Members must choose whether to open a retirement account, and then choose from various investment options with different risk and return characteristics. This ‘choice’ can be confusing for people who have not been engaged with their super up to this point. 

For this reason, Fryer says there has been a lot of talk about the need for so-called ‘soft defaults’, offering simple default retirement income solutions targeting different groups of members. It might not make sense for everyone, but it could be helpful for some.

For example, longevity products could be offered as part of a default option for the middle group of part-Age Pensioners, potentially giving them access to more Age Pension as well as income for life. 

The need for advice

Another hurdle for super funds and their members is the complexity of longevity products and how they interact with account-based pensions and the Age Pension. People may also have questions around how much income to draw from an account-based pension, and what proportion of their savings to invest in a longevity product.

Fryer says most members will probably need some advice. Hopefully, the implementation of the government’s Quality of Advice Review will make it easier for funds to provide timely, affordable advice to members.

With your life savings at stake and the security that comes from knowing you have guaranteed income for life, we recommend you seek independent financial advice and check with your super fund to see what advice they offer.