ASIC chair Joe Longo has delivered a blunt warning to superannuation trustees, cautioning that board-level ignorance of member complaints and internal failings will not be tolerated and could trigger enforcement action.
Speaking at a lunch at AmCham in Sydney on Thursday, Longo said too many super trustees were flying blind on core service failures, with data, systems and governance gaps that leave members exposed.
“If you don’t have the right information to make good judgements, you simply cannot govern effectively. It’s that fundamental,” Longo told the audience. “So, if management isn’t collecting or providing that information – trustee board directors need to be demanding it.”
“Consider this speech as a reminder ASIC has read the riot act to the super industry,” he added.
“There will be trouble for any trustees who fail to know their business inside out and fail to act in the best interests of their members.”
The remarks form part of a broader regulatory push to drive what Longo called a “step-change” in how superannuation trustees deliver member services.
ASIC, he said, will soon launch the next phase of its multi-year project in the sector, a review to examine how trustees learn from and act on complaints to identify systemic issues.
“A trustee’s approach to complaints is a clear and meaningful measure of whether they’re focused on the interests of their members. It also indicates the maturity of the trustee’s approach to risk. That’s why ASIC has been urging industry to act on complaints for some time now,” Longo explained.
“Let’s not forget, it’s already an enforceable requirement to regularly analyse complaint data to identify systemic issues. This is member services 101.”
InvestorDaily understands that information gathering from selected trustees will begin in the first half of the financial year, with findings to be published in 2026.
Trustees found to be noncompliant will face enforcement action, Longo warned.
The initiative comes in the wake of ASIC’s damning review into death benefit claims, where delays stretched into years and no trustees monitored end-to-end processing times. That review was triggered by a sharp rise in complaints, data Longo said trustees themselves should have acted on.
“ASIC’s work has laid bare governance challenges, and exposed super trustee board blind spots around their data, systems and processes,” the chair said.
“For example, our death benefits review found that even the fastest trustees processed less than half (48 per cent) of their death benefit claims within three months. The slowest processed only 8 per cent in that time.
“No matter how you look at it, that’s a long time for your loved ones to be waiting to be paid your money if they need to make ends meet.”
All this, he noted, points to the “cold hard truth” that super trustees have to get a grip on their data, systems, and processes.
“They have to know what’s going on in their own business,” Longo said.
