Media Release

One in two Australians have never accessed information on preparing for retirement

Research released by ASFA, the voice of super, today reveals that only 51% of adult Australians, including around 60% of those aged 65+, have consulted any source of information on preparing for retirement.

Accessing good-quality information about superannuation and retirement can help improve retirement incomes, by helping consumers understand and set financial goals and employ strategies to reach them.

ASFA CEO Mary Delahunty said, “It’s concerning to see such a lack of engagement with information about retirement. It means many Australians may end up worse off than they should be in their post-working lives, simply because they haven’t been empowered with the relevant guidance.”

“This research highlights the need for urgent reform to make high-quality, low-cost advice easily accessible to every Australian worker through their super funds,” Ms Delahunty said.

Sources of information

ASFA’s recent survey — which was demographically representative of the population in terms of age, gender, education, and location — asked respondents which sources of information they consulted concerning their retirement.

Possible sources included professional service providers (like financial advisors), advice provided by super funds, information published by the superannuation industry, internet resources like online calculators, the media, and social media.

The percentage of people who had consulted each information source was:

  • Professional services (financial advisors) — 21%
  • Friends and family — 21%
  • Online calculators and other online resources — 15%
  • Advisors from super funds — 12%
  • Media articles — 8%
  • Social media — 6%

For those who had consulted at least one information source, older Australians were more likely than younger people to have consulted formal sources like professional advice and advice provided by super funds.

Younger Australians were more likely to have consulted informal sources like friends and family, and social media. People in the 18–34 cohort were 15 times more likely to source advice from social media than people aged 65+, leaving them far more vulnerable to scams involving superannuation.

Advisors are trusted sources of information

The survey found that Australians of all ages have a high degree of trust in professional advisors, advice provided by super funds, and industry benchmarks like the ASFA retirement standard.

Net trust of each source (the percentage of respondents who trust the source minus the percentage of those who do not) per age cohort was as follows:

Table: Net trust (all respondents, regardless of whether they consulted an information source)

While super funds were some of the most trusted sources of advice, they remain highly underutilised.

“Given the high degree of net trust in financial advisors and advisors from super funds, it’s concerning to see how low the use of these sources of advice are. This mismatch suggests that there are significant barriers preventing Australians from accessing the advice they need,” Ms Delahunty said.

“Although people trust financial advisors as a source of information, the problem is that their services remain too expensive for the average working Australian to access. Sadly, these are the people most in need of quality financial advice to improve their retirement outcomes,” Ms Delahunty said.

Need for advice reform

ASFA is calling for the retirement income sector to work together and progress the second tranche of Delivering Better Financial Outcomes Reforms, which will make quality, trusted financial advice more accessible through super funds.

“The advice in super legislation will reduce red tape and improve the efficiency of accessing advice. It will be a revolutionary step for Australian’s access to trusted advice that will improve their financial wellbeing in retirement.

“Our research shows how critical these reforms are to ensure that our superannuation system remains the envy of the world, we will continue to work closely with Government and with other stakeholders to align the sector to progress these issues as a matter of priority,” Ms Delahunty said.

 



For further information, please contact ASFA Media team: 0451 949 300

About ASFA

ASFA, the voice of super, is the peak policy, research and advocacy body for Australia’s superannuation industry. It is a not-for-profit, sector-neutral, and non-party political, national organisation. ASFA’s mission is to continuously improve the superannuation system, so all Australians can enjoy a comfortable and dignified retirement.

Carmen Beverley-Smith

Executive Director - Superannuation, Life & Private Health Insurance, APRA

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Carmen joined APRA in March 2023 and holds the role of Executive Director, Life and Private Health Insurance and Superannuation.  

She has had an esteemed career in financial services, spanning over 25 years. She has held diverse leadership roles at Westpac and Commonwealth Bank of Australia, including across risk, transformation and change, product and portfolio development, and sales and service. 

Prior to joining APRA, she held the role of General Manager, Risk Transformation Delivery Integration at Westpac. This involved leading the group-wide implementation of a suite of solutions to uplift risk management capability and develop data, analytics and reporting. 

Carmen leads with a values-driven approach and a particular interest in developing and mentoring talent. 

She holds a Bachelor of Commerce and Accounting, is a certified Chartered Accountant and a Graduate of the Australian Institute of Company Directors. 

Amy C. Edmondson

Novartis Professor of Leadership and Management, Harvard Business School

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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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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.