Super funds have built the tools. The real battleground is helping members manage their money.

Log into almost any major Australian super fund today and the tools are all there. You can consolidate your accounts, find lost super, change your investment option, add a contribution, model your retirement, compare your fees. The functionality that used to separate the leaders has quietly become standard.

When we benchmarked 15 of Australia's leading super funds on two axes, functionality and experience quality, that showed up clearly^[1]. On functionality, the field bunches high. Most funds have built the overwhelming majority of the criteria we scored, many above 90 percent, and Hostplus has built the most at 96 percent. Having the tools is no longer the achievement. It is the price of entry.

On experience quality, how well all those tools actually work for a member, the field spreads out. Australian Ethical leads on experience without leading on coverage. Hostplus, the fund with the most features, ranks only sixth. Same tools, very different experiences. That gap, between what a fund has built and how well a member can actually use it, is where super competes now.

And in super, that gap matters more than in almost any other category. Here is why.

Money is the hardest experience to design for

Most people do not want to think about their super. It is decades away, it is abstract, and the numbers are big enough to be stressful. So the default behaviour is avoidance. Most members never change a setting, never compare an option, never open the retirement calculator. The ATO is holding $18.9 billion in lost and unclaimed super, spread across more than seven million accounts^[2]. That is disengagement measured in dollars.

That is the designer's challenge. A retail app can lean on desire, you already want the thing in the cart. A super app has to overcome inertia and a little bit of dread. The experience has to do the work that motivation does everywhere else. It has to make managing your money feel manageable.

So the battleground is not the feature list. It is the handful of moments where a member could actually take control of their money, and whether the experience helps them do it or quietly lets them off the hook.

Where the battle is actually won

Here is where I would focus.

1. 01

   Make consolidation feel like one tap, not a task

   Finding and combining lost super is the single highest-value action most members can take, and it is often buried behind a form that feels like paperwork. The funds that win make it feel like a prompt, not a chore.

   

2. 02

   Close the retirement gap

   This is the biggest opportunity in the sector, and it is not just my read. Most digital experiences are built for the accumulation years, when a member is contributing. The tools thin out exactly when the questions get hardest, at and in retirement, when a member has to work out how to actually draw the money down. The Government's own Retirement Income Review found that retirees often lack the tools to work out the right drawdown, and so default to the legislated minimum amid choice overload and the fear of running out^[3]. When APRA and ASIC then reviewed how funds were meeting their Retirement Income Covenant obligations, they found a lack of urgency, with far too many funds making only incremental improvements^[4]. The regulators are describing exactly what our benchmark measures. The fund that makes the retirement decision feel understandable will own the most valuable, and most anxious, moment in a member's life.

   

3. 03

   Turn information into guidance

   Named AI assistants are arriving, Ash at AustralianSuper, Roger at Rest, Liz at HESTA, and they signal the real shift. A balance and a set of numbers is information. Telling a member what it means for them, and the one thing they might do next, is guidance. That is the leap members actually need.

   

4. 04

   Be honest, and show it

   The funds that display real returns and real fees plainly, with no manufactured urgency and no dark patterns, build the trust that engagement depends on. In a category where the product is literally trust with your money, honest design is not a nicety. It is the strategy.

   

5. 05

   Treat accessibility as non-negotiable

   Accessibility was the weakest area we measured across super, averaging 54 percent. Around one in five Australians, 5.5 million people, live with disability^[5], and for a whole-of-population membership that is also ageing, that is not an edge case. It is a large share of the people a fund exists to serve, and it is a duty under the Disability Discrimination Act, not just good practice^[6].

   

6. 06

   Speak plain human

   Australian Ethical sums up its whole proposition in three plain words: invest, altogether, better. Members understand what they are joining in seconds. Plain language is not dumbing down. It is the difference between a member who feels informed and one who feels talked over.

   

The bottom line

For years, the super digital race was about building the tools. That race is largely finished, and most funds crossed the line. The consolidation flow, the projection calculator, the fee comparison, nearly everyone has them now.

What separates funds from here is whether all of that actually helps a member feel in control of their money. Not whether the calculator exists, but whether a member finishes it and knows what to do next. Not whether consolidation is possible, but whether it feels easy enough that they actually do it.

Members do not want a dashboard. They want to feel like their future is in good hands, and like they could shape it if they chose to. The fund that designs for that feeling, not just for the feature list, is the one that will win the next decade of members. Because the details others miss are where the experience actually lives.

References

1. Jackdraw, Superannuation UX Benchmark 2026 (the Jackdraw CX Index). All fund-level figures cited here (coverage, experience quality, accessibility and the rankings) are drawn from this benchmark: 15 funds scored against 79 functionality criteria and 48 experience-quality checkpoints across 13 UX frameworks. jackdraw.com
2. Australian Taxation Office, $18.9 billion lost and unclaimed super (2025). ato.gov.au
3. The Treasury (Australian Government), Retirement Income Review: Final Report (July 2020). treasury.gov.au
4. Australian Prudential Regulation Authority and Australian Securities and Investments Commission, Implementation of the retirement income covenant: findings from the joint APRA and ASIC thematic review (July 2023). apra.gov.au
5. Australian Bureau of Statistics, Disability, Ageing and Carers, Australia: Summary of Findings, 2022. abs.gov.au
6. Australian Human Rights Commission, web accessibility and the Disability Discrimination Act 1992 (guidance applying the WCAG standard). humanrights.gov.au