Another colloquium of superannuation researchers

4 min read
4 min read

Colloquium is a rather strange collective noun but for some reason it has become attached to the annual gathering of superannuation researchers in Australia at the 26th Colloquium on Pensions and Retirement Research held at UNSW (the University of New South Wales).

One of the good things about the Colloquium is the multiplicity of themes and topics that are explored. However, there were some recurring themes.

One such theme was getting the best possible outcomes for members through:

  • the provision of advice where appropriate
  • framing of options, and
  • default outcomes.

However, getting people to do the most sensible thing given their circumstances is a continuing challenge for researchers (and funds).

The bus trip from UNSW to the Colloquium dinner at Darling Harbour was actually an allegory for this.

The charter bus driver had his detailed directions but the drop off zone had been taken over by building works. Despite passengers, mostly me, giving advice on where to turn, the driver persevered with trying different default options and had us heading over the Harbour Bridge to North Sydney, to East Sydney, back to Chinatown and then through the Cross City Tunnel to Rushcutters Bay. The delegates finally disembarked at Town Hall before a probable trip over the Anzac Bridge.

Advice is only effective if somebody trusts you and is willing to listen. Unfortunately too many fund members work off a finance roadmap that is out of date or they trust more in their own judgement. However, increasingly funds are developing apps and other tools to provide members with the financial advice and information equivalent of a GPS unit.

What many members need are simple and clear directions to get their finances from where they are currently to their retirement goal. That said, it is not always easy to provide such navigation given the strict road rules relating to provision of personal financial advice.

One interesting set of research results was that, regardless of information format, merely inviting fund members to top up their retirement savings has an impact. However, more voluntary savings are made if fund members are given projections of both retirement balance and income in retirement. The prospect of falling short of expectations and/or requirements in retirement can have a powerful impact.

However, developing simple and easily implemented financial strategies is not easy. The goal for an individual is not necessarily just to maximise the lump sum available at the time of retirement, nor is it to necessarily de-risk almost entirely during retirement. The role of the Age Pension needs to be taken into account as well.

The Member’s Default Utility Function (MDUF) got a run in a number of papers with some of the authors receiving a prize from David Bell for their innovative use of MDUF. The notion of a utility function which is more than one dimensional is important for evaluation of policy proposals. “Efficiency” of a retirement solution, in the sense of ensuring that while income will continue until death there will be no funds left as a bequest, is only a partial measure of how good a fit a retirement income product will be. Australians also have the comfort of an indexed income stream available for life in the form of the Age Pension, albeit one that is means tested and at a very modest level.

That said, some of the drawdown rules put into action can be pretty simplistic. Another of the research papers found from a sample of 44,000 account based income streams that the dominant rules were either: use the minimum drawdown or withdraw a constant amount. Many members also make periodic ad-hoc drawdowns, suggesting a need for some flexibility and access to capital in retirement products.

I expect that when the researchers gather again next year some familiar topics will be further discussed. Academic research can take some time and there are many challenges for the system which are difficult to research and address. This is not a criticism of research, more a call for further investigation to be undertaken on important aspects of the superannuation system.

Picture of By Ross Clare

By Ross Clare

director of research

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Amy C. Edmondson

Novartis Professor of Leadership and Management, Harvard Business School

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Keynote 8 – Navigating the energy transition: opportunities, investor strategies and policy needs

Amy C. Edmondson is the Novartis Professor of Leadership and Management at the Harvard Business School, a chair established to support the study of human interactions that lead to the creation of successful enterprises that contribute to the betterment of society.

Edmondson has been recognized by the biannual Thinkers50 global ranking of management thinkers since 2011, and most recently was ranked #1 in 2021 and 2023; she also received that organization’s Breakthrough Idea Award in 2019, and Talent Award in 2017.  She studies teaming, psychological safety, and organisational learning, and her articles have been published in numerous academic and management outlets, including Administrative Science Quarterly, Academy of Management Journal, Harvard Business Review and California Management Review. Her 2019 book, The Fearless Organization: Creating Psychological Safety in the Workplace for Learning, Innovation and Growth (Wiley), has been translated into 15 languages. Her prior books – Teaming: How organizations learn, innovate and compete in the knowledge economy (Jossey-Bass, 2012), Teaming to Innovate (Jossey-Bass, 2013) and Extreme Teaming (Emerald, 2017) – explore teamwork in dynamic organisational environments. In Building the future: Big teaming for audacious innovation (Berrett-Koehler, 2016), she examines the challenges and opportunities of teaming across industries to build smart cities. 

Edmondson’s latest book, Right Kind of Wrong (Atria), builds on her prior work on psychological safety and teaming to provide a framework for thinking about, discussing, and practicing the science of failing well. First published in the US and the UK in September, 2023, the book is due to be translated into 24 additional languages, and was selected for the Financial Times and Schroders Best Business Book of the Year award.

Before her academic career, she was Director of Research at Pecos River Learning Centers, where she worked on transformational change in large companies. In the early 1980s, she worked as Chief Engineer for architect/inventor Buckminster Fuller, and her book A Fuller Explanation: The Synergetic Geometry of R. Buckminster Fuller (Birkauser Boston, 1987) clarifies Fuller’s mathematical contributions for a non-technical audience. Edmondson received her PhD in organisational behavior, AM in psychology, and AB in engineering and design from Harvard University.

 

Daniel Mulino MP

Assistant Treasurer and Minister for Financial Services

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Keynote 8 – Navigating the energy transition: opportunities, investor strategies and policy needs

Born in Brindisi, Italy, Daniel was a young child when he moved with his family to Australia. He grew up in Canberra and completed his first degrees – arts and law – at the ANU. He then completed a Master of Economics (University of Sydney) and a PhD in economics from Yale.

He lectured at Monash University, was an economic adviser in the Gillard government and was a Victorian MP from 2014 to 2018. As Parliamentary Secretary to the Treasurer of Victoria, Daniel helped deliver major infrastructure projects and developed innovative financing structures for community projects.

In 2018 he was preselected for the new federal seat of Fraser and became its first MP at the 2019 election, re-elected in 2022 and 2025. From 2022 to 2025, Daniel was chair of the House of Representatives’ Standing Economics Committee in which he chaired inquiries; economic dynamism, competition and business formation and insurers’ responses to 2022 major floods claims.

In 2025, he became the Assistant Treasurer and Minister for Financial Services.

In August 2022, Daniel published ‘Safety Net: The Future of Welfare in Australia’, which aims to explore the ways in which an insurance approach can improve the effectiveness of government service delivery.