Oct. 29, 2025

Superannuation Under the Microscope: Fees, Taxes, The Gender Gap, and Annuities

Superannuation Under the Microscope: Fees, Taxes, The Gender Gap, and Annuities

#10. Co-hosts Sarah Penn and Neil Benson discuss the latest news and issues affecting the Australian superannuation sector.

Highlights

  • Big fines in the industry: ASIC and CBUS settle member claims delays with a $23.5 million fine, highlighting the financial pain for profit-to-member funds and contrasting it with corporately-owned funds like Macquarie.
  • Super tax complexity: The introduction of new rates brings the tally to 20 different tax rates within superannuation, sparking debate about fairness and system complexity.
  • Gender disparity in super balances: Data shows continuing gaps between men’s and women’s average and median super balances, with recent policy changes like paid super on government maternity leave seen as marginal improvements.
  • Divorce and superannuation: Settlements rarely reflect the true value difference between super balances and physical assets, impacting long-term retirement outcomes, especially for women.
  • Fee trends: Despite falling headline fees for six consecutive years, the total super sector fees have climbed in dollar terms, raising concerns about the real impact of the race to the bottom and its effect on administration quality.
  • Member communication and personalisation: Most super fund communication is still generic and lacks true personalisation, missing opportunities to increase engagement and education.
  • Retirement income covenant and annuities: Growing attention on how funds can help members better manage income in retirement, including new product ideas like digital forms presenting personalized drawdown rates; discussion on whether mandated annuities could be a future government intervention.
  • Feedback - we love it: let us know what you think and we'll give you a shout out on the show.

That Super Show

That Super Show is the most downloaded podcast for Australian superannuation professionals. Sarah and Neil cover the issues, debates and decisions shaping the industry - without the spin.

Subscribe to the show wherever you listen to podcasts and don't forget to leave us a rating and review.


Your Cohosts

Sarah Penn

Sarah Penn is the CEO and founder of Mayflower Consulting, an Australian financial services consultancy specialising in product governance, PDS management, and product operating model design. Her team works with super funds, fund managers, and investment platforms across Australia.


Neil Benson

Neil Benson is the global chief product officer at ChandlerCX, where he leads a team focused on intelligent customer messaging for regulated organisations, including superannuation funds, banks, insurers, utilities and public sector organisations. His AI startup, Novagentic, was acquired by ChandlerCX in February 2026.


Mentioned in this episode:

Mayflower Consulting

This episode is brought to you by Mayflower Consulting. We work with product teams across super funds, fund managers, and platforms to move faster. Faster PDS updates, faster decisions, and less friction. If governance is slowing you down, we can fix that.

Mayflower Consulting

00:00 - Untitled

00:02 - Introduction to the Super Show

08:06 - Superannuation Account Balances and Taxation

11:05 - Gender Disparities in Superannuation

19:30 - Superannuation Fees and Member Personalization

24:36 - Retirement Income and Annuities Discussion

35:32 - Closing Thoughts and Future Conversations

Neil Benson

Welcome to that Super Show, a podcast where we talk all things super from the inside. I'm Neil Benson, CEO of Superwire.

Sarah Penn

And I'm Sarah Penn, CEO of Mayflower Consulting. Each week we unpack what's changing in the industry, what funds are wrestling with and how tech and regulation are shaping the landscape.

Neil Benson

Sometimes we bring in expert guests, but mostly it's just us having a real conversation about how super is working and what could make it even better.

Sarah Penn

Let's get into. Well, welcome to episode number 10. We have reached double figures. Hi Neil, how are you?

Neil Benson

I am doing awesome, Sarah, it was great to see you in Sydney this week. Thanks very much for catching up and impressing the socks off my 10 year old daughter Zanna who joined us. She thought you were amazing.We all think you're amazing.

Sarah Penn

Oh well, thank you. But it just shows I really am a 10 year old on the inside.

Neil Benson

Very good.

Sarah Penn

So what's been happening? Lots in the news as always.

Neil Benson

Yes, I noticed ASIC and Seabus have agreed to settle on some issues related to death benefit and other claims. Last year, over the last couple of years, 7,000 members affected by late settlement of claims. Members were $20 million out of pocket.But the fine or the, you know, the settlement is $23.5 million which is a stonking amount of money still to be approved by the federal court. But what do you think of that?

Sarah Penn

It is a huge amount of money, isn't it? I think it's one of those few times when it's very hard when you're a profit to member fund because that money has to come out of members money.

Neil Benson

It is, yeah.

Sarah Penn

I mean it's coming out of the operational risk reserve, the orr. But as you said before, it's going to eat most of the orr and then that will need to be, that will need to be topped back up by members money.So I think the interesting thing for me is how that compares to the Macquarie just agreeing to pay out the 3,000 whatever it was members for the Shield First Guardian. Yes, because it is corporately owned and they made $3 billion last year in profit.So they were able to just pay that out and keep going on their merry way.

Neil Benson

Yeah. It shows you the stark contrast between a retail fund and an industry fund when it comes to ownership and these kind of risk reserve pools, even a.

Sarah Penn

Very, very large industry fund. It's not like CBUS is one of the biggest ones.

Neil Benson

So I'm glad the matter's behind them. I hope everybody can move on and they can, yes, improve the level of service.I did notice that CBUs and MUFG have also settled their dispute over the same matter. I don't imagine there's going to be a lot of Christmas card writing between the two of them this year, but.

Sarah Penn

Although maybe financially, maybe they'll be able to claw back some from MUFG which will help offset the 23 and a half that's about to leave the front door.

Neil Benson

Yeah, perhaps.

Sarah Penn

Man, that must hurt.

Neil Benson

Yeah. Well, my thoughts go out to everybody in C. Hopefully we can close our chapter and move on.

Sarah Penn

Oh, dear me. Next one.You found a interesting article that points out because someone's added it up because they clearly were having a very boring day in the office. There are now 20 different tax rates within Super.

Neil Benson

That's right.So this is, I think once we add on the two new tax rates that Jim Chalmers announced a couple of weeks ago, there are now going to be 20 different tax rates for inside superannuation.Five in contributions, six on earnings within the fund, the funds, four related to benefits, three related to pensions and four more related to death benefits. Now I looked at the table and some of these are like, well there's nil tax to pay on the first $2 million in your pension. Well, that's not a tax.I guess it is. It's a tax rate. Zero tax rate. But yeah, takes up a line item in the table. It's complicated. Hey, that's a lot going on.The tax accountants inside Superfund must be pretty busy.

Sarah Penn

Yes, indeed they are calculating tax and then allocating it back out to your Even if you've only got a few thousand members or right up to you, 3 million members is that's a big job that happens every year. About now actually is when it's all being finalized for each super fund. I do think though it is a bit of a beat up.I mean because it's such a large system for so many people, it does need to have different rates in it so that it can be fair across the whole machine. In fact, I saw some data from when Simpler super came in.Must have been about 2005, 2006, about then the Peter Costello special when they got rid of reasonable benefit limits and they really flattened it out and then someone did the work a couple of years after that or in the middle teens and looked at who was getting all the benefit out of super.And because they'd flattened it out so much, what actually ended up happening was about 80% of the tax benefits of super were going to the two highest or the highest quintile of people. So it was astoundingly unfair that something was supposed to help everyone retire better.Nearly all the benefit was going to very rich people, which, you know, it's lovely if you're one of them, but it's not really the point team.And interestingly, since then, with all the stuff that's come in with the 1.6, which is now higher cap, and now there's 3 and 4 million changes and blah, blah, blah, which has meant we've ended up with these 20 different tax rates. But it does mean that the tax benefit of super is not quite as skewed as it was before.

Neil Benson

I agree. I think we'll continue to tweak it as well. It's never going to be perfect.

Sarah Penn

Yeah, definitely. I think so too. It's like income tax rates really. You know, they change all the time. Every year they're tweaked with in the, in the federal budget.Sometimes there's a bit of talking about it, but often there's not very much really, and we all just sort of get on with it.We know that it's part of making sure there's enough money in the coffers to have roads and education and hospitals and all those other things that we expect to just magically always be there. And hopefully super is now getting into that bucket as well.

Neil Benson

My wife Natasha used to work at a big FMCG company in London and I don't think they ever got there.One of their goals was every time they invented a new toothpaste was to take another toothpaste off the shelf so that they, you know, they recognized that poor consumers didn't want to have to choose between 400 different toothpastes. Correct. We do appreciate choice, but sometimes choice can become overwhelming. I wish we could do similar things with taxes as well. One in, one out.For every new one you want to add on, you've got to take away another one and keep the system as simple as you can.

Sarah Penn

True.Well, interestingly, when the GST came in in 2000, I think, because it was about the same time as the year 2000 bug was going to stop all the computers working, which of course didn't happen. The GST did get rid of a huge raft of other taxes, actually, and did simplify things considerably. According to my father, that was one.

Neil Benson

Good one who still shakes his fist at every government who's ever sat part of them sins. It was supposed to get rid of stamp duty as well, I think, and it didn't. Taxes.But yeah, we still have a very low rate of GST in Australia compared to other countries. So I will, you know, thank my lucky stars and we'll move on.

Sarah Penn

Yes, that's right. Don't look over here. No, look over there.

Neil Benson

Our friends at ASFA have published a new white paper or a new report on superannuation account balances. I think they get a huge trove of sample anonymous sample data from the ATO. The data goes back to June 2023, so it's not quite current.So for example, hard to know what the impact of the 12% superannuation contribution rate will be probably for another couple of years. But the report makes pretty interesting reading if you like. Lots of stats and data get into it.

Sarah Penn

The headline, which we do.

Neil Benson

We do, that's what this show is all about.The headline There is a 30 year old today who's got a balance of $30,000 in their superannuation accumulation account, can expect to retire with $610,000 in super, which is just above ASFA's $595,000 comfortable retirement standard. So that's pretty good. I think the system, if that's true, the system's working as intended.

Sarah Penn

Yeah, I think it is too.I mean superannuation started, I mean, I know other people were already getting superannuation for various reasons, but it was legislated in 1992 at 3% which was going to ruin the entire economy. We were never going to come back from it at the time. Of course that didn't happen. I was 17 then.So people who, at my age, which is 50 and older, we've only had the very slow ramp up to the 12%. But as you say, if you're 30 now, you've got most of your earning still ahead of you and we have a nice high sgc.So hopefully those people will retire with a big bucket of money that makes a big difference to their retirement. Speaking of retirement and going completely off script, I was at a retirement conference the other week.One of the CEOs was saying that Alexis George from AMP, she was saying that people die with 90% of their super balance on average.

Neil Benson

Oh well, let's talk about that. We're going to have a little segment in this episode on the retirement income covenant.Yes indeed, we are passing away with too much left in your super. It's not a terrible thing, but it's not as bad as running out of money. But it's an issue for part of the system, right?People carrying large balances when they pass and how can we help them Avoid that. Is it appropriate that we do that?Just coming back to the asphalt count balances, I had to remind myself going back to my maths stats classes, the difference between an average and a median.

Sarah Penn

Oh, yes.

Neil Benson

For men over 15, the average balance is 192k and the median is only 68. A massive difference between the average and the median, which must mean that there's some massive.There are balances out there dragging the average up that don't impact the median.For women over 15, the average is 154, which is about $40,000 short of the balance that men have and the median is 54, which is $14,000 short of the balance that men have. So I've got some work to do. We've always got some work to do in gender equality and superannuation.

Sarah Penn

Yes, well, because it's based on your working patterns and your income, both of which are skewed towards male. Men earn more and have less time out of the workforce. Yes, it's. It's a bit hard to see how it's going to end up with any other difference. It's.Interestingly, there's. Because as part of the 3 million 4 million tax, there was also the extension of super is going to be paid on government paid maternity leave.I think was part of that. And I know everyone does a bit of rah rah about it, but it's such a small amount of money in the scheme of things. It hardly barely makes a dent.I feel like that sort of starts fiddling around the edges, more promo than really doing anything useful. But that's just me giving the world a side eye.

Neil Benson

I think you're right.I think the announcement that the government made that they were going to pay superannuation contributions on maternity leave, government paid maternity leave was. It adds up to a couple hundred dollars or maybe, maybe $1,000 or something. So it's. Yeah, it's.It's not going to make a huge impact on these stark differences in the superannuation balances between men and women. But yeah, step in the right direction. Just needed to take a much bigger step.

Sarah Penn

Yeah, yeah. Yes. I mean, what will fix it is closing the gender pay gap and making sure that men and women equally take time off for child rearing.That's basically it. The rest of it's just fiddling around the edges.

Neil Benson

I think another. I'd like to see some data on this.I think one of the big differences is also when a couple of divorces, if one partner gets to keep a million dollar superannuation balance and the other one keeps a million dollars in cash. Those two things are not equal. You can't get a million dollars of cash and put it into superannuation and be left with a million dollars.So there's a disparity there between the settlements and I'm sure family lawyers are aware of that and try and negotiate equal settlements.But I know some people who settle out of court or you know, come up with an agreement between each other and I'm not always sure if the parties understand the differences in one. One of them retaining a big superannuation balance and the other one taking a cash or a house that's worth X thinking it's equal.Because there's a big difference.

Sarah Penn

Yes, well, I think often it comes down to one. Usually the woman trying to keep a roof over her head.And so when push comes to shove, she takes the house and he takes the super or takes a bigger proportion of the house in to sort of trade off against the super. But yeah, half a million bucks worth of house is not the same as half a million bucks worth of super. One of them gives you an income for a start.One of them is in a tax advantaged environment. One of them doesn't have a loan against it that you don't get any tax back on. Blah, blah, blah. It is an issue. I can see that.I can see why it happens at the time. The general feel now is that I believe courts do try and go for closer to 5050 super and 5050 house.But the problem is if that's leaving someone without a roof over their head and off their children's head then you can see why it ends up happening. It's not great though.

Neil Benson

It's not great. So long way to go. Let's come up with some other ideas Sarah, for getting that one up.

Sarah Penn

I heard a great phrase the other day. We need to spend less time admiring the problem.

Neil Benson

Perfect. Yes, that's a great way of describing it.

Sarah Penn

Which I guess is what we've just been doing. Admiring the problem, looking at it from all angles. Oh yes, Terrible, Neil, terrible.

Neil Benson

Sounds like council road workers around Brisbane.

Sarah Penn

Yes, and Sydney.

Neil Benson

Look at that pothole. Isn't that an amazing pothole? Well, on to better news. Superannuation fees have fallen for the sixth straight year.I had a quick look at this one because there's some shenanigans going on with this because actual fees in dollar terms have risen 5% but that's been outpaced by 7% increase in funds under management and I guess inflation's not far behind 5% either. So it's, you know, the fees are rising slightly ahead of inflation, but the superannuation sector is costing members $34 billion in fees.Is that an appropriate amount? No. I've always got two minds about fees in superannuation. What do you think, Sarah?

Sarah Penn

I think that the race to the bottom on fees is very dangerous and takes us right back to where we started, which is CBUs paying $23.5 million because they're not paying. I should put this is allegedly and conjecture and my thoughts and definitely not anything that you should take any account of.But when you as an industry, a group of super funds have a race to the bottom on administration or general fees, which then means a race to the bottom on how much you are willing to pay administrators and then you end up with rubbish administration. And then everyone looks surprised.

Neil Benson

Yep.

Sarah Penn

One should not look surprised.And that is caused not by the super funds but by the regulators yelling at the super funds constantly that how much they charge is super important and it should be lower, lower, lower, lower, lower. But the expectations are just higher, higher, higher. It doesn't add up.And interestingly, if you look at the difference between super fees, you know, like this one's, I don't know, 20% higher than that one, which actually is only a few can be just a few basis points because their fees are very low overall when people actually retire, yes, it will make a difference to the bucket of money, but when you turn that bucket of money back into an income stream, it makes bugger all difference.

Neil Benson

Oh, I'd like to see some data on that one.

Sarah Penn

Yes, I will whiz up a spreadsheet and show you.

Neil Benson

Okay, well that'll be good.

Sarah Penn

Yeah, yeah.

Neil Benson

So, yeah, I think of my retirement accounts in the UK and in the US where I'm sure there's fees. There's no explicitly charged annual fee or membership fee or an admin fee or anything like that on my retirement accounts there.But the systems are very different. They have no obligations that Australian superannuation funds have to, you know, provide member services and insurance and all these other benefits.So. Oh, no.

Sarah Penn

Even with that, it's because they're primarily annuities. And you see, in an annuity you don't tell the customer the fee, you tell them the return.

Neil Benson

Well, no, I'm just talking about the mind. You're just simple investments in ETFs and things.

Sarah Penn

So there's a. Oh, okay, yeah, yeah.

Neil Benson

There's a management expense ratio and those kind of investment fees inside the ETFs based on whichever investment vehicles I've chosen. But the holder of self invested personal pension in the UK or the Roth 401k in the US doesn't charge me an additional fee.Over and above that, maybe there's a kickback of some of the investment fee to the.

Sarah Penn

Yeah, because they can't be doing it for free, you know.

Neil Benson

Charles Schwab is not a charity.

Sarah Penn

No, no, no, not at all.

Neil Benson

So. But it appears free.

Sarah Penn

Yes. Well, this is the thing with this stuff, isn't it? It's the optics, you know, even with the performance test.The performance test doesn't, I don't think, doesn't take into account the administration fee. It only takes into the account the investment fee.So you can have a higher administration fee but still pass the performance test because you can have a tiny investment fee and vice versa.

Neil Benson

Yes.

Sarah Penn

So there's still opportunities to sort of game it.I think that article though actually isn't too bad because it's looking at the total amount of fees paid over the total amount of money in super, which is a better way of looking at it, I think, than splitting out admin and investment fees, which does happen in other ways.

Neil Benson

So it's just a fine line.I think if we can continue to justify the fees that we're charging and being charged, that we're investing in great member services and member experiences and dignified retirements, then game on.

Sarah Penn

Let's go then. Sure, yeah, yeah, no, I agree. You can't be collecting money and having rubbish service. I was going to use swear words but managed not to just.Which then I guess takes us straight on to your next one about super industries lagging on member personalisation.

Neil Benson

Yeah, so this was an interesting one by Renee Harvey, who's the Chief Customer Officer at mlc, talking about really comparing the kind of personalization and the customer experience that people get as a superannuation fund member compared to other experiences in their everyday life as well.In banking and health insurance, I think one of the examples she gave was going to the dentist and getting booking confirmations or appointment confirmations. We interact with our super fund probably far less often than some other types of service providers, but I think we could definitely get a better job.I don't know if you remember, Sarah, I joined 15 superannuation funds last year.

Sarah Penn

Oh, I do. I tell people all the time.

Neil Benson

As a bit of market research. I was reminded of it because I went to fill in an early access compassionate grounds claim on the ATO website, just again, doing some research.And they said, which fund did you want to pulled the money out of it, gave me a big list of all the funds I remember. So the ATO is all over it. I get a lot of member communications as a result, and they're very unpersonalized.I'm being invited to workshops, you know, educational seminars both on early career, making extra contributions and preparing for retirement. Not quite the same email. But even just the personalization of the communications that are coming to me as a member leave a lot to be desired.

Sarah Penn

Yeah, lots can be done, I think on that front without too much difficulty and angst.

Neil Benson

But it comes back to the, you know, how much can we invest in that member experience without raising the admin fees to extraordinary levels where members will flee. It's a fine line.

Sarah Penn

Yes, well, interestingly, I don't actually think sending extra. It costs a bit, but it doesn't cost very much.I do think that there's this general issue with funds not sending out enough communication about things or thinking. And it's not funds, obviously it's busy people with a million things on their plate. Like, I'm fully aware of that.But if there's some change that's happening, we tend to tell people about it once.Whereas from a marketing perspective, with my marketing hat on instead of my regulatory comms hat on, I know that you have to tell people things about six times before you've got any chance that anyone will remember once. So telling people things once and expecting that that will somehow work just doesn't work.I mean, even just from an open rate on emails and things, you know, an amazing open rate is 30% and you unlikely to get anything like that for super emails. So if we imagine that the open rate is 10%, then that's 1 in 10 people who've seen the thing you've just sent them.So if you want to make sure that everyone in that cohort probably sees it once, you have to send it out even 10 times probably doesn't get you there. That's a lot more than one.

Neil Benson

Let's say you had a retirement calculator or some kind of robo advisor that you wanted to promote.You could continue to send messages to promote that thing to those members, but once they have engaged with that tool on your website, you don't need to keep reminding them about it. We do need to send more messages, but we don't need to send them to all the people all of the time.

Sarah Penn

Yes, I agree.

Neil Benson

Target them better. Remove people who've already engaged with whatever it is promotion that you're trying to.

Sarah Penn

Yes. And funnily enough, there's loads of systems out there that make that very straightforward to do even when each of those systems does sit separately.So you're knowing whether or not someone's age is separate system to knowing whether or not they've logged into the portal, which is often the case.But there's loads of marketing systems that sort of sit over the top of that and you pull in data feeds from both those spots to be able to see what's what and then you can do the personalization.

Neil Benson

Well, let's have some. Let's have some superannuation marketing experts come and join us and explain how it all happens.Oh yes, to improve the communications being sent out to members. That'd be wonderful.

Sarah Penn

Yes. Well, speaking of. Actually, you and I are both attending the Future of Member engagement Conference on the 18th and 19th of November in Sydney.We will be talking about all those things.

Neil Benson

That's right, we aren't.

Sarah Penn

Hopefully there'll be lots of good ideas. I'll have my notebook at the ready.

Neil Benson

You just remind me I need to book some travel note. Thank you. That's right, it's the IBR Engage 2025 and this is the first time the Engage conferences is a forum.The first time the Engage Forum has been held, I think. So it's a brand new one on their roster.

Sarah Penn

Yes, I believe it is. Sarah thinks about that hard for a minute. Yes. Anyway, it's shaping up. It looks really good actually.Stephen Hubbard, who puts the program together, has done a fantastic job.

Neil Benson

So that's.

Sarah Penn

We can't solve everything over those two days then. I don't know, Neil. I give up.

Neil Benson

So that's for people involved in member engagement, marketing, communications.

Sarah Penn

Yep, all the folks, admin risk, anything that's relevant. Anytime you come near a customer, let's.

Neil Benson

Bring them all along. Good. We'll see you in Sydney.

Sarah Penn

Yes, indeed, yes. Now, the last thing I wanted to talk about on the news front, what sort of news but the retirement income covenant.I've been to a couple of conferences just recently about retirement and there's been much discussion. Much discussion, Neil, about annuities.And I'm beginning to come around to the idea that maybe Super Funds should do something on that front, which I know they're being forced to by the regulator. So I am the laggard here and it doesn't negate the problem of selling the bloody things.

Neil Benson

Some people will run out of money in super, even if they're not going to. Not a huge risk of running into money. There are a huge swathe of people who just want to know how much they're going to get and enjoy the certainty.But of a fixed income in retirement. And annuities play a really important role there in saying you can buy $100,000 a year for the rest of your life at this price.I think annuities, they've got some baggage and some history and modern annuities are pretty good.I learned recently, for example, that quite often if you pass away within a short period of time after taking out the annuity, you just paid a million dollars, given it to the annuity provider and you pass away a few months later, your family's going to think that was an awful waste of money.But it turns out that most annuity providers will pay a lot of that back to your family, realising that, you know, they didn't pay out any income to the beneficiary. So that's good. There's some kind of protection there so that the annuity is not a complete waste of money if happened to pass away early.And at the same time they will continue to pay out in your 90s and 1/ hundreds if you live much longer than expected as well. So they're taking a not sort of risk.But the income that you can generate from an annuity is kind of related to the interest rates available, the interbank interest rate at that time when you retire or buy that product. So today what are we at? Mortgage rates are about 5.5%, so the cash rates will be about 4.5% or 4.25%.Whatever it is, that kind of sets the price of your annuity. So a lot will depend upon the year that you retire and the interest rates prevailing at the time. So can be tricky.

Sarah Penn

Yes, I guess that was one of my other takeouts from these couple of retirement conferences is expecting people to be able to plan at the age of 60 ish for the next 30 years is highly problematic.And if I think back to where I was at 10 years ago and even just the way, you know what I thought about the world and how my views on lots of things, they have changed considerably in 10 years. So that's from 40 to 50.So from 50 to 60 they will change again, probably about the same amount and then 60 to 70 and then 70 to 80 and then 80 to 90 if I'm still going. So expecting to be able to make decisions around the age of 60 for the next 30 years is. It's very tricky.I did see some interesting things though, where one of the funds was talking about when people retire, when they want to start an income stream. The form that they are given gives them some other rates first. That's not the minimum and it's because it's a digital form.It's based on the money that they have in their fund. So it says, here's if you take this amount of money per year, there's 80% chance it'll last forever.And if you take this amount of money per year, then there's a 70% of chance it'll last until forever or 93, whatever the number is. It's all based on your personal life expectancy. And they're sort of big and, you know, in color and stuff. Then they have a little box underneath for.Or if you don't want any of that, you can just take the minimum. But because of the way they present it and what they do is it's just a percentage of your balance.So it's like you can, if you take 2% more than the, than the minimum or you take 3% more, is that sort of way it's set out. It gives you an actual number. And they said their take up of those higher amounts has been absolutely fantastic.And I thought this is really interesting because it's a way of helping people think about how long their money needs to last and whether it's going to last, but not telling them they have to hand it all over and then we'll give you back a bit at a time, which is what an annuity is. And I just think there's.It was a great example of how you can encourage people to have a better life in retirement, which is what your income is supposed to be for rather than dying with most of it still there.The problem with dying with most of it still there for a lot of people is it means they've been doing without in retirement if they have a decent amount of money.They've stopped flying overseas because they didn't want to fly business class because it cost too much money, even though they could afford it, for instance. And they've stopped doing other things.They haven't upgraded the car, they haven't done all those other things because they're terrified about the money running out when they'd be happier and safer and more fulfilled and all the rest of it. If they had more travel and they had a safer car.

Neil Benson

Yeah, honestly, it's not just in retirement that they've made sacrifices. It's in their working career as well. They were making extra contributions, you know, instead of spending more Time with their family.Then they spent that money on an extra top up to their super and they didn't spend it and they retired.

Sarah Penn

That's right. And then it just goes to their kids, which is great, you know, as one of those kids, although my dad's doing a pretty good job of spending his. But.But you know, a lot of us, we don't need the money anyway. So if my dad does die when he reckons he's going to, which is when he's 100, I'll be 70 then what am I gonna do? I'll be old.Or as my daughter says, very old.

Neil Benson

Very old.

Sarah Penn

Clearly I'm already old.

Neil Benson

Yeah. Climbing Kilimanjaro at seven years old.

Sarah Penn

Oh yes, definitely.

Neil Benson

Thanks dad. For the inheritance.

Sarah Penn

Yes. Maybe I'll floor the helicopter flight to the top.

Neil Benson

So how do you see it planning out, Sarah?Are we going to have some of the Australia's biggest superannuation funds offering more of their own annuities which they will manufacture and manage themselves? There's a couple of big providers in that space who I guess will partner with a lot of superannuation funds. But then there's a whole.How do we get these annuities into the hands of the folks who want them? Appropriately, there's a big advice gap we already know and our financial advisors coming along on that journey as well.And it's not just the superannuation funds who've got this retirement income covenant obligation, it's the people who advise the members in the first place.

Sarah Penn

Well, a covenant wise it is only the super funds.And this is part of the issue, right, is that we're expecting super funds to solve a societal issue because they happen to be the ones with the money, which I'm not thrilled about because I think it's a way for everyone else to walk away and go buy everyone else, I'm in government to walk away and go, well, it's super funds and if they don't solve it then you know, we'll just blame them. And it's like, yeah, but super is not people's only money. Often they've got houses and they've got other investments, there's other things going on.And the super fund doesn't even know if they're married, let alone if they own their own house. So it's very hard for super funds to do all that sort of stuff.But in terms of how to get annuities into people's hands, this has always been the thing that stopped me from being pro annuities. It's very hard.

Neil Benson

It is. They're complicated.

Sarah Penn

They're very hard to sell. They're complicated.What might end up forcing it is the government might end up saying that 20% of your super has to be converted into an annuity when you retire or something like that. And actually if that does happen, that will then set off the chain of events that will then start making annuities mainstream.

Neil Benson

So.

Sarah Penn

Yeah, but that's even further away from the, you know, that it's my money, I want to do with it as I see fit. Thank you very much.

Neil Benson

You both are going to react to that mandate.

Sarah Penn

Oh my goodness, they'll go nuts.

Neil Benson

They'll come out your pitchfork, Sarah.

Sarah Penn

I know. Well, this is, this is kind of the problem.And all the research does say that people who have annuities are actually happier because they're more settled and they spend more money and they have a nicer life and they know how much money they've got and it's all good. Right. But on the other side it's the, you know, don't tell me how to spend my money, you bastards.

Neil Benson

Well, we can continue doing what we're trying to do today, which is to encourage the take up of annuities, for example, by, I think 60% of the income that you get from your annuity counts towards the age pension income test. So you get a bit of a break there.

Sarah Penn

Yes.

Neil Benson

And so, yeah, I think there's other levers the government can pull rather than just saying, oh, 20% of your super has to go to an annuity. We can. What do we say?

Sarah Penn

Our listeners will be listening to this, not seeing it, but you should have seen the look on Neil's face when I just said that.

Neil Benson

I like the idea of having choice. I'm pro annuity, but I don't want to force everybody to take one on. I think that's. Yeah, that's not going to be a very popular measure.

Sarah Penn

Yes, well, super funds need to do those other things like giving people choices that look much better to get them to take more than the minimum. Because if people keep dying with all their super or 90% of it, the government eventually is going to start legislating stuff.

Neil Benson

Well, I would love to hear what our listeners think. And one way we can do that, Sarah, is if they can comment on this episode's post on our LinkedIn page. What do you reckon?

Sarah Penn

Indeed, yes. Yes, we have a LinkedIn page for that super show. It's very hard to find. Not, it's just LinkedIn.com company forward/thatsupershow.Or, you know, you can just find it on LinkedIn.

Neil Benson

Yeah. And if you think we're not going to include that in the episode description, you're mistaken. It will be in the episode description.So you can click and click on that as well. Dead easy.

Sarah Penn

Yes. Because we'd love to know what you think.We'd love to know who else you'd like to hear from, because, I mean, obviously we're amazing, but there's lots of other people out there and we do. We do enjoy interviewing them. We've done two interviews so far which have both been very popular.

Neil Benson

Got lots more lineup.So if you're an expert on annuities, if you work for one of the big annuity companies, if you're going to be coming along to the ASFA conference, grab us there and let us know you'd like to come and join us on the podcast and bring us up to speed on the latest news on annuities. That'd be awesome.

Sarah Penn

Yes, absolutely. Especially if someone can figure out how we're actually going to sell them to the punters, because that's the biggest problem.

Neil Benson

Well, let's find some member engagement, member marketing people as well.

Sarah Penn

All right, sounds like a plan, Neil.

Neil Benson

Awesome. Thanks, Sarah.

Sarah Penn

Thank you very much. See you soon.

Neil Benson

See you next time.

Neil Benson

Thanks for listening to that super show. We hope today's episode gave you something useful to take back to your team.

Sarah Penn

If you're thinking we should talk, we'd love to chat. You can book a meeting with either of us via the link in the show notes.

Neil Benson

And don't forget to follow the show, share it with a colleague, and drop us a line if there's a topic.

Neil Benson

You want us to tackle.

Sarah Penn

Catch you next time on that super show.