The confidence gap: building pathways to support better retirement decisions 

5 min read
5 min read

We’ve spent decades helping Australians build their super. Now comes the hard part: helping them spend it.

Australia’s superannuation system has done a remarkable job helping many people accumulate for retirement. But that success hasn’t yet translated into the retirement phase, turning those savings into reliable income for retirees. With more Australians retiring every year, this is both the next opportunity and pressing challenge for the sector, writes Aaron Minney, Head of Retirement Income Research at Challenger.

Supporting stronger member pathways

The introduction of Retirement Income Covenant in 2022 recognised that super doesn’t stop at retirement. It also brought sharper focus to the role funds can play in helping members navigate the decumulation phase.

While the focus is often on having a retirement income product, delivering strong member outcomes in retirement are best met through a combination of three components:

  • Know your member: Understanding their composition, preferences and needs of the member base is essential for tailoring retirement solutions.
  • Building a range of solutions: Funds should build and offer products to that reflect the needs of their members, recognising it’s not a one-size fits all solution.
  • Providing clear guidance: Supporting members with relevant advice, education and tools helps retirees choose the solution that is right for their needs.

A range of pathways to support members

Super funds have many options to help their members generate income in retirement. A key part of this is providing education so members can have the right information when deciding how to convert their savings to an income stream. While education helps members understand their choices, many will need some form of advice at the critical point – at retirement. The question is: How will a member access the advice that suits their needs? Given diverse member preferences, funds should consider offering a variety of options.

Currently, a range of advice models operate within super funds. Some super funds follow a traditional advice model while others use scaled or digital solutions to assist with the large number of members in and approaching retirement that need help. The Conexus Institute has looked at a range of pathways for funds to offer retirement solutions. This discussion focuses on the advice and guidance elements, rather than retirement products.

Comprehensive personal advice

The traditional approach to supporting retirees has been through personal advice provided by a licenced financial adviser. This model considers a member’s full financial picture – including assets, liabilities and household circumstances – to create a tailored retirement income strategy. Advisers may be employed by the fund or operate independently on referral.

While comprehensive advice remains the gold standard for managing complexity and personalisation, it isn’t always practical or accessible.

In recent years, the number of financial advisers has fallen to less than 16,000 on the ASIC register. This falls well short of what’s needed to service the 250,000 people approaching retirement every year – on top of those already receiving ongoing advice. Cost is also a barrier, with fees of up to $5,000 or more. This challenge was echoed in a live survey at ASFA’s Spotlight on Retirement event, where attendees acknowledged the importance of advice in retirement – but note that only a minority need full comprehensive advice. The challenge, and opportunity, lies in alternative advice, guidance and education pathways.

Hybrid and digital advice models

One promising solution to bridge the gap is hybrid advice. This model blends digital tools with human advice to lower cost and increase accessibility. Some super funds have begun to implement different forms of digital advice solutions for members, some with an annual fee, other tools provided as a service, and some consider one-off payments for the advice.

Success in implementing hybrid advice strategies will come from the ability to meet the need to advise members at scale. Digital solutions can be efficient and processing the information and allocating solutions, but people often prefer human advice. A hybrid advice approach can support this by enabling the member to engage with the digital elements, for as far as they are comfortable, and have the opportunity to engage with a human adviser before the final decision. The outcome is a large increase in productivity enabling the same adviser base to service a larger number of members.

General advice with member choice

Another approach that can generate scale benefits for a super fund is to provide enough information and guidance that members are equipped to make an informed decision on their own retirement solution. This is a very effective solution for members without complex retirement needs. While historically, this might have been used to help members start an account-based pension, funds have been helping members to implement broader solutions that meet the fund’s obligations under the Retirement Income Covenant.

Tools such as “cameos” and member profiles allow people to see how different solutions might apply to them. These can be paired with clear, general advice prompts encouraging members to seek further support when needed.

Take mortgage debt, for example. Rather than referring every member with a mortgage to an adviser, a fund might offer a general guidance statement like:

Many members who start retirement with a mortgage use a lump sum from their super to pay off the rest of their mortgage

Members with similar circumstances can recognise themselves in this and take confident, informed action – without needing to navigate the advice process unless their situation is more complex.

Better member outcomes

While the right retirement income products are critical, when paired with advice and guidance it delivers better outcomes for Australians in or approaching retirement.

Whether through comprehensive advice, hybrid models or general pathways, the common goal is the same: helping members make confident, informed decisions that support their lifestyle in retirement.

Stronger support at retirement also supports the fund itself – building trust, boosting retention, and delivering on the promise of super as a source of income in retirement.

Picture of By Aaron Minney, Head of Retirement Income Research, Challenger

By Aaron Minney, Head of Retirement Income Research, Challenger

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Derek Thompson

Via live link

Best Selling Author, Podcast Host of 'Plain English'

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

Few speakers can match Derek Thompson‘s ability to synthesize mega-trends in society, labor, economics, technology, and politics. Put another way: Derek trawls the data sets and does the forecasting and deep reporting necessary to help us better understand how we live, how we vote, how we spend, and how we work.

In his paradigm-shifting #1 New York Times bestseller, Abundance (co-written with Ezra Klein), this award-winning journalist reveals how our policies and culture have pushed us into a world of scarcity (not enough housing, workers, or progress)—and offers a radical new path towards a world where housing is affordable, energy is plentiful, and innovation flourishes across industries.

He shares a compelling vision of a future where we have more than enough for everybody, and a practical, actionable roadmap for how to get there. It starts with taking more risks, building more expansively, and recognizing that we all have the power to create a world of abundance. “Everything’s utopian until it’s reality,” he says.

Carmen Beverley-Smith

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

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

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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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.