GROW promised funds more freedom. What happens now?

Welcome to TRR #18 for 2026.

This edition takes a closer look at MUFG’s proposed acquisition of GROW, a startup super fund that morphed into a super admin provider, one focused on giving super funds more freedom over how they serve members. The deal has prompted questions about the super system’s capacity for innovation. We think it raises a more useful question: how do funds decide which innovations are worth supporting, and thereafter determine whether they are delivering for members?

On 28 August, MUFG Pension & Market Services (formerly the Link Group) announced an agreement to acquire GROW Technology Services, subject to regulatory, shareholder and court approvals.

There is a certain irony here: MUFG, as the dominant player in a rapidly consolidating space, is proposing to buy an entity created to challenge the capability limitations of established administrators.

In a July 2019 interview with ASFA, co-founder Josh Wilson described the obstacles GROW encountered when trying to connect its member-experience technology to existing administration platforms.

“We ran head-first into a wall,” he said at the time.

Wilson argued that closed systems constrained funds’ choice of providers and access to their own data. GROW responded by building an admin platform through which funds could connect the advice, analytics and member-service providers they wanted to use.

The ambition was “greater control over how they deliver value to their members”.

That promise remains visible in GROW’s current platform offering: open architecture, access to data and the ability for funds to choose their own applications and operating models.

If the transaction proceeds, GROW will become part of an incumbent seven years after that interview. MUFG says the merger would expand its capabilities and the operating models it can support. As the biggest fund currently using GROW, HESTA has welcomed the proposal, seeing potential for faster platform development and more personalised member services.

The question that interests us is whether the combined business can extend GROW’s original ambition: making it easier for funds to transform how they serve members.

Developing a platform and delivering administration reliably at scale require different capabilities. MUFG’s operational resources could help GROW fulfil more of its promise. In this scenario, the acquisition can be a way to put innovation to wider use. But the proposal alone tells us little about whether GROW could have sustained its ambitions without the resources of a larger parent.

If the deal proceeds, funds will have one less standalone admin service provider, and GROW’s development priorities will sit under the same ownership as MUFG’s existing platforms. Whether greater delivery capacity compensates for that reduction in competition will depend on how the combined business behaves.

Funds can test GROW’s promise of flexibility by examining how readily they can connect a preferred advice provider, use their data to identify member needs or preferences, or change a service without lengthy and expensive deployments.

Those capabilities have particular value in the retirement phase. As we argued in the previous edition of TRR, the move from accumulation to retirement changes the services members need from their fund. Funds are still learning which combinations of products, guidance and support work for different members.

Writing about the deal, Investment Magazine’s Lachlan Maddock argues that fee expectations can undermine the economics of innovation among super’s service providers. Funds shape those economics through what they commission, and the terms on which they engage with service providers (often through a CPS 230 ‘material service provider’ lens).

Better service at lower cost is a legitimate ambition. Accurate records, dependable payments and less time spent on paperwork all matter to members. Funds also need to establish where existing services are insufficient. Savings may help fund additional or differentiated support; they may not reveal what support is needed in the first place.

APRA’s 2026 product analysis, released on the same day as the acquisition announcement, found administration fees and costs had declined across most product types. Trustees have established benchmarks against which to compare those costs. Measuring better retirement support is, however, less developed.

In their 2025 retirement pulse check, published last November, APRA and ASIC observed limited use of measures assessing members’ retirement outcomes, experience or satisfaction. Most participating trustees focused on product/service performance and take-up, without assessing the impact on member sentiment and outcomes.

This suggests that funds have a firmer basis for comparing administration costs than for demonstrating the value of retirement support, which could favour innovative improvements whose benefits are easier to demonstrate.

James March’s work on organisational learning helps explain the risk: organisations may favour refining existing activities (i.e. process engineering), where returns are more predictable, over exploring product feature improvements where the cost/benefit trade-off is less certain. Funds need room for both as they improve how members are served.

GROW set out to give funds greater control over the services they could develop to improve member outcomes. MUFG may provide the resources to extend that capability. The merger’s test will be whether funds can use that flexibility to address the member needs they identify, while delivering reliable everyday service.

That leaves a useful question for the next admin platform startup: which member problem will this help solve, and how will we know whether it has worked?