AustralianSuper retained its commanding position across Australia’s superannuation market during the opening four months of 2026, while Australian Retirement Trust (ART) and CommBank Super emerged as standout performers on conversion efficiency and customer service metrics.
New research from Conjointly’s Brand Tracker found AustralianSuper continued to dominate every major stage of the superannuation ‘funnel’, recording 58 per cent aided awareness, 30 per cent consideration, and 19 per cent primary fund status by April 2026.
The figures placed it comfortably ahead of the sector’s other major players, including Rest and Hostplus, which each recorded 48 per cent awareness.
Meanwhile, Rest translated that awareness into 12 per cent primary fund status, while Hostplus recorded 8 per cent.
The report suggested AustralianSuper’s position strengthened significantly early in the year, with the fund posting the largest consideration increase of any brand tracked during the period.
Consideration jumped from 24 per cent in December 2025 to 31 per cent in February 2026 before moderating slightly to 30 per cent in April.
Conjointly said the scale of the increase pointed to a likely campaign or media effect concentrated during February, with the uplift also appearing to flow through into member acquisition.
Primary fund status rose from 16 per cent in December to 19 per cent in April, peaking at 20 per cent in March.
Although AustralianSuper maintained the strongest overall market position, the data highlighted growing competitive pressure from smaller and mid-sized funds capable of outperforming larger rivals on efficiency and member perception.
ART was identified as the strongest “mid-tier converter” in the tracker, transforming 43 per cent awareness into 17 per cent consideration and 10 per cent primary fund status by April.
According to the report, this conversion rate outperformed competitors including Cbus and AMP despite both funds recording similar awareness levels.
The findings also pointed to CommBank Super as a service leader within the sector despite sitting outside the largest funds by awareness.
The major bank’s fund recorded the highest average customer support score across the tracker at 68 per cent, outperforming the category average of 55 per cent by 13 percentage points.
Across the broader diagnostic measures, which included perceptions around competitive returns, acting in members’ long-term interests, investment philosophy and customer support, AustralianSuper and CommBank Super were the only funds to consistently score above category averages throughout the four waves of research.
CommBank Super achieved four-wave averages of 65 per cent for competitive returns, 63 per cent for acting in members’ long-term interests, and 68 per cent for customer support, each materially ahead of the industry averages of 53 per cent, 53 per cent and 55 per cent respectively.
Investment philosophy was identified as the weakest scoring category across the industry overall, averaging just 46 per cent across all funds.
Conjointly said the gap between lower-scoring funds and CommBank Super’s 60 per cent average suggested there was meaningful differentiation in how members perceived alignment between funds and their own financial values.
“Our first four months of continuous tracking reveal two distinct stories in the superannuation market,” said Nik Samoylov, founder of Conjointly.
“AustralianSuper’s funnel dominance is unambiguous and consistent across every wave. But the diagnostics show that smaller funds like CommBank Super and Australian Retirement Trust have built genuine competitive advantages in service quality and conversion efficiency that the raw awareness numbers alone would not reveal.”
The findings were drawn from a syndicated survey of 5,425 Australian adults, including 2,848 respondents who held a superannuation account and were under 65 years old.
Participants were recruited through Conjointly’s panel network, with responses weighted to national demographics. Data was collected across four separate waves between December 2025 and April 2026.
