Why aren’t super funds moving to fill the advice gap?

“Super funds have an immediate opportunity to meet the growing unmet advice needs of Australians, but must first ensure they have a strategy and operating model which enables them to deliver services their members need efficiently, at scale, and in the best interests of members.”

That is the bottom line assessment of the latest KPMG Super Insights report released this week.

The report also comes just weeks after research undertaken by HFS Consulting principal, Colin Williams confirmed that while the major banks had largely exited the financial planning arena the superannuation funds, particularly industry superannuation funds, had not moved to fill the gap.

Williams’ research noted that while the super fund sector had held up well in terms of adviser numbers, it had not actually grown “which many may see as surprising given the losses elsewhere and a greater take up of industry funds by the public post the Royal Commission”.

Superannuation adviser growth had not shown any significant growth since 2018.

The KPMG analysis said that with demand for advice services likely to increase, funds needed to think about how they provided accessible, low cost advice solutions to meet the needs of members, “without creating a negative financial impact for members that don’t utilise these services”.

“Ensuring process efficiency in the advice creation and delivery value chain, and closely managing the economics of cost‑to‑serve and cost‑recovery are critical to creating a sustainable advice offering,” the analysis said.

“…any advice offering – be it intra‑fund only, a comprehensive in‑house advice model, a third party partnership arrangement, or any other model – must be built on a foundation of unrelenting focus on quality advice, through ensuring advisers are highly trained, well supervised and disciplined in their approach,” it said.

“Ongoing changes in regulation and consumer expectations are transforming the financial advice profession, increasing the costs of providing advice, and driving many participants to leave the industry,” it said. “Super funds have an immediate opportunity to meet the growing unmet advice needs of Australians, but must first ensure they have a strategy and operating model which enables them to deliver services their members need efficiently, at scale, and in the best interests of members.”