Since 2022, Challenger has facilitated roundtable discussions with super fund executives to discuss solutions to the retirement income puzzle.

At our last discussion held on 6 March in Melbourne, Capital Preferences, a global research and technology innovator in the field of decision science, presented their national study of income certainty preferences, covering 4,000 members and 20+ Funds, and the significant implications for the industry. You can download the study at www.capitalpreferences.com/member.

Having just completed extensive briefings with Treasury and APRA, Pat Spenner, Head of Strategy and Danielle Press, Senior Adviser at Capital Preferences explored the scientific advances that make deeper member understanding possible and discussed the implications for fit-for-purpose assistance and retirement advice strategy.

Following on from the research, Jeremy Duffield, Co-founder and Director of SuperEd, offered ideas on:

• how to segment a membership base (sharing household data insights from a 200,000+ population of older Australians);
• how to develop a trustee guided retirement solution; and
• what complementary drawdown rules for retirees could look like.
   

In an engaging discussion (thanks to all participants) it was evident that there is a desire to design a retirement solution, not only to meet the Retirement Income Covenant requirements, but also to give members a better experience.

The building blocks to create a retirement journey and complementary retirement solution are available. Immediate steps can be taken; there is no reason to wait. What is required is a decision to innovate from super funds, and offer members a better solution than the status quo.

We are planning to facilitate the next roundtable discussion in August 2024. Based on the feedback we received, using a case study, we will work with different industry stakeholders to showcase the important elements of a retirement journey and offer solutions on how to implement this at scale.

For further information, please contact Stephan Richartz, Director, Institutional Client Solutions on 0428 659 780 or srichartz@challenger.com.au.

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