In this guide
- Budget brings borrowing ban, CGT shake-up and a new trust tax
- Labor and the Coalition block teenage super push
- Super fund call centres fail customer service test
- The super balance that decides your retirement
- Retirees are more satisfied, but most pre-retirees aren’t prepared
- ASIC takes aim at the super sector on three fronts
- Mercer Super fined $10.3 million for sustained reporting failures
- Get more guides like this with a free account
Budget brings borrowing ban, CGT shake-up and a new trust tax
The government passed legislation banning self-managed super funds (SMSFs) from entering new limited recourse borrowing arrangements (LRBAs) to acquire residential property, after reaching a deal with the Greens to secure budget passage. The legislation received Royal Assent on 26 June.
The ban applies to new arrangements only. Existing LRBAs are unaffected, and SMSFs retain the ability to borrow to purchase commercial property under the existing rules.
SMSF Association chief executive Peter Burgess said the focus of reform should be on those who exploit consumers, not the structure they use. He pushed back against suggestions raised during the Senate inquiry that SMSFs should face additional restrictions because complying super funds were carved out of the CGT and negative gearing changes. “Treating SMSFs as the problem mischaracterises the issue and risks directing reform away from the conduct that causes the harm,” Burgess said. “The focus should be on those who exploit consumers through aggressive marketing, lead generation schemes and poor advice practices.”
The legislation came with a broader package of tax reforms. From 1 July 2027, the 50% capital gains tax (CGT) discount for assets held personally or in trusts will be replaced with an inflation-linked discount, alongside a new minimum 30% tax on capital gains. These changes do not apply to super. The concessional CGT rates in super remain unchanged: 10% in accumulation phase and 0% in retirement phase. Investors in new housing will be able to choose between the existing 50% discount and the new regime when they sell.
A separate minimum 30% tax on income distributed from discretionary trusts takes effect from 1 July 2028. Complying super funds are excluded.
Labor and the Coalition block teenage super push
Labor and the Coalition voted together in the Senate on 1 July to reject a Greens attempt to extend super to all workers under 18, regardless of hours worked.
Under current rules, employers are not required to pay the superannuation guarantee (SG) to workers under 18 unless they work more than 30 hours in a given week. The Greens introduced a partial disallowance to the relevant regulations, arguing the exemption leaves 515,000 young workers without super and costs them an estimated $405 million in contributions in 2025–26 alone.
Greens finance spokesperson Senator Barbara Pocock said 93% of under-18s work fewer than 30 hours per week because of school and study commitments, meaning they miss out regardless of how much they earn. “Labor is picking the pockets of teenagers to put it in the profits of Coles and Woolies,” Senator Pocock said. The Greens said they would keep pushing for the change.
Super fund call centres fail customer service test
A new mystery shopping study has found major super fund call centres are falling short on basic customer service, adding weight to calls for mandatory service standards across the industry.
Super Consumers Australia (SCA) partnered with Customer Service Benchmarking Australia (CSBA) to assess 20 major super fund call centres through 1,000 mystery shopper calls. The average customer experience score was just 49.9%, no fund scored above 55% and none reached SCA’s 80% “green zone”.
AustralianSuper, the country’s largest fund, answered just 10% of calls and was excluded from the overall rankings, along with Team Super, which answered 52%. Across all funds tested, 87% of calls connected.
Make your super work harder – for free
Get practical, independent guidance to help you grow your balance, save tax and make smarter super decisions with a free SuperGuide account.
Find out moreThe study found 23% of prospective customers were told to “go online” as the only solution, and in 58% of calls made on behalf of someone with limited English, funds redirected responsibility back to the caller rather than helping directly. 70% of calls from customers experiencing vulnerability, such as those seeking urgent access to super after a distressing event, scored 5 out of 10 or lower for empathy.
SCA chief executive officer Xavier O’Halloran said a healthy super balance wasn’t enough on its own. “People… need to know their fund will pick up the phone when they’re grieving, need to access their money or ask a simple question, and actually help them,” he said.
SCA is calling for mandatory customer service standards, backed by public reporting, independent benchmarking and better staff training. Members can check their own fund’s result using SCA’s call centre scorecard tool.
The super balance that decides your retirement
Retirees with less than $250,000 in super face a high likelihood of exhausting their savings within a decade at a comfortable lifestyle, regardless of how their portfolio is structured, according to new research from Monash University.
The report, Comfort or Collapse: Why Balance Size and Design, Not Just Returns, Decide Retirement, by Associate Professor Ummul Ruthbah and Dr Trinh Le from Monash Business School, found sustainability became near-certain at balances above $400,000, regardless of portfolio design. For those in between, the mix of assets matters: a blend of equities and bonds offers the best outcomes for modest balances. An all-equity approach carries drawdown risk in poor markets, while a bond-heavy portfolio can erode savings faster than expected when income is drawn at a comfortable level.
The research also highlights the risk of sequencing: a retiree who left the workforce in 2022 faced substantially worse outcomes than one who retired a year later, despite similar balances. The timing of retirement relative to market conditions has a lasting effect that contribution strategies and portfolio design cannot fully offset.
The gender gap remains stark. Women retire with a median super balance of $212,000, compared to $283,000 for men, a difference of 20–30%.
Retirees are more satisfied, but most pre-retirees aren’t prepared
One in three Australians approaching retirement have taken no steps to prepare, and one in five don’t know what they will do with their super, despite two-thirds describing themselves as financially engaged, according to new research from TAL.
The second edition of TAL’s What I Wish I Knew About Retirement report, based on a survey of 2,000 Australians aged 55 and over, found retirement tends to arrive earlier than most people expect. Six in 10 current retirees left the workforce before age 65, yet only 15% of those still working expect to retire that early. The gap matters financially: five fewer years of contributions at peak earning capacity makes a material difference to a final balance.
Product choice has a large bearing on retirement satisfaction. Around 90% of retirees who chose pension accounts or lifetime income products were satisfied with their decision, compared to 66% who took their super as a lump sum. Yet only 38% of pre-retirees are familiar with how these products work, and 87% said they would want to find out more if their fund offered a lifetime income option.
“People care deeply about their financial futures and they’re paying attention, but we don’t see that in the actions they’re taking to plan for this critical life stage,” said Shaun Bransdon general manager of retirement and wealth at TAL.
Australia’s super system is projected to grow from around $4 trillion today to $12.4 trillion by 2045, according to Deloitte’s Dynamics of the Australian Superannuation System 2026 report. But Deloitte Actuarial Consulting partner Andrew Boal said scale alone is not the measure of success. “There is an urgent need for more sophisticated, fit-for-purpose retirement products that can balance income, flexibility and longevity protection for a much larger and more diverse retiree population,” Mr Boal said.
Make your super work harder – for free
Get practical, independent guidance to help you grow your balance, save tax and make smarter super decisions with a free SuperGuide account.
Find out moreASIC takes aim at the super sector on three fronts
Australia’s corporate regulator issued a series of warnings and enforcement actions against the super sector in June, targeting platform trustees, lead generators and investment scammers in quick succession.
In a review of six platform trustees managing more than $300 billion in member benefits, the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) found persistent and in some cases worsening failures to protect retirement savings. Report 833, released on 29 June, identified gaps in monitoring harmful advice fees, inadequate scrutiny of advice licensees’ business models and half of trustees conducting no checks on advice documents for at least one month during the review period. In one case, a trustee failed to act for 13 months after identifying suspicious activity, during which time another representative submitted rollovers using falsified signatures of a deceased financial adviser.
ASIC commissioner Simone Constant pointed to the collapses of the Shield Master Fund and First Guardian Master Fund, which cost more than 11,000 Australians around $1 billion in retirement savings. “Despite being well aware of the dangers of poor oversight, some trustees failed to establish basic protections, like looking into an advice licensee’s business model before they are onboarded. This is a clear breach of trust,” Commissioner Constant said. ASIC said enforcement action would follow where significant non-compliance was found.
On 18 June, ASIC named 19 more entities involved in lead generation, adding to the initial 44 published in February. Lead generators typically cold-call fund members or use social media clickbait to pressure them into switching funds, often unnecessarily. The full list of 63 entities, including referral partners and advice licensees that acquired leads, is at Moneysmart. ASIC encourages trustees to cross-reference it against their internal data for signs of high-risk switching activity. Members receiving unsolicited calls about their super should hang up.
The Consumer Action Law Centre has added weight to calls for stronger action, releasing a report in July arguing that lead generation in high-risk sectors should be banned outright. The report, Manufactured Consent: Stopping the Harm from Manipulative Lead Generation, found lead generation “sorts and steers consumers through systems designed to manipulate them towards decisions they may not otherwise have made.” It calls on the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) and legislators to ban lead generation in high-risk sectors, expand unfair trading practices laws to explicitly cover it, and tighten consent requirements on digital platforms.
ASIC also launched an initiative to combat imposter scams, inviting more than 6,500 Australian financial services (AFS) licensees to list their official website addresses on its Professional Registers Search. Criminals increasingly copy the names, logos and websites of legitimate super funds and investment platforms. In the first three months of 2026, Australians reported 60,657 scams, with losses of $248.3 million.
Mercer Super fined $10.3 million for sustained reporting failures
The Federal Court has ordered Mercer Super to pay $10.3 million in penalties after finding it systematically failed to report significant member service investigations to ASIC for almost three years.
The failures ran from October 2021 to September 2024. Seven investigations were never reported to the regulator at all. A further investigation was reported late and included false or misleading information that understated the number of members affected. The unreported investigations covered insurance premiums charged to accounts after members had died, $64 million in member funds left unallocated and eligible members denied death and total and permanent disability (TPD) insurance cover.
ASIC chair Sarah Court said the case sent a clear message to the sector. “When investigations into serious member service issues are not reported to ASIC as required by law, this can allow problems impacting members to persist unchecked, increasing the risk of ongoing harm. The Court’s decision sends a strong message to the superannuation sector that accurate and timely reporting is not optional,” Court said.
Mercer Super is Australia’s seventh-largest super fund by members, managing almost $80 billion on behalf of more than one million members. ASIC’s action follows a $23.5 million penalty against the trustee of the CBUS Super in November 2025 for serious failures in processing members’ death benefits and insurance claims.
Get more guides like this with a free account
better super and retirement decisions.
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.