Beyond Accumulation: Building the infrastructure for Australia’s future retirement system

Australia’s superannuation system has been extraordinarily successful at helping people accumulate retirement savings. But as retirement balances continue to grow and roughly 98 Australians retire every working hour, the industry faces a new challenge: helping members convert those savings into secure and sustainable income throughout retirement.

In our new whitepaper, Beyond Accumulation: Building the Infrastructure for Australia’s Future Retirement System, we explore why delivering better retirement outcomes requires a coordinated, system-wide approach spanning operations, engagement, advice and product design. Key themes explored in the paper include:

• Industry is at an inflection point with record levels of retirement savings and growing retiree numbers, increasing advice demand and evolving member expectations.
• Retirement is a system challenge, requiring stronger integration across technology, operations, advice and income solutions.
• Operational transformation is critical to support more complex retirement journeys, improve member experiences and enable future innovation.
• Retirement system treated as social infrastructure, with greater collaboration across industry participants to improve outcomes for future generations of retirees.

The paper does not provide all the answers, but offers a perspective on the challenges and opportunities ahead, and the role the industry can play in building a more connected, scalable and effective retirement system for all Australians.