Retirement's Shifting Landscape

Welcome to TRR #20 for 2026.

Retirement in Australia is changing shape, and so is the scrutiny around it. Fewer Australians now step off a cliff from full-time work into full-time retirement. More are gradually exiting through part-time work, often earning, contributing and drawing down all at once in their final years of work. The funds they retire into are being judged ever more closely; by consumer-centric initiatives on one side and regulators on the other.

This edition follows that thread across three distinct news items.

Australia's workforce is ageing not just in size but in shape, according to a July research note from the Australian Industry Group (Ai Group). Employees aged 50 and over now contribute 29% of hours worked, almost double the 16% share of 1991. Two forces are at work: the population itself is ageing, while older Australians are staying attached to work for longer, enabled by better health and flexible work arrangements, and pushed by current financial pressures and the prospect of longer lives.

Females are a principal driver of this trend. Over the past 25 years, labour participation has risen 15% for females aged 50–54, 27% for 55–59 and 35% for 60–64, sharply narrowing the gender gap. Male participation, already high, has grown more modestly.

Workforce ageing is, however, uneven across the economy. Trade, manufacturing, transport and real estate have the oldest workforces, with over-50s exceeding a third of employees, and have aged faster than the national average over the past decade. Construction and mining remain youthful as physically demanding roles are unappealing to ageing workers, while utilities, healthcare and education have actually become younger on the back of strong hiring and a lift in vocational training opportunities.

Ai Group also finds that engagement patterns shift with age. Annual job mobility falls from 10–12% for under-30s to 3.5% for 60–64 year-olds, with very few over-65s changing jobs, preserving expertise but raising the risk of clustered retirements.

Part-time work rises steeply: around one in six men and one in three women aged 50-54 work part-time, climbing to one in three males and two in three females by retirement age. Beyond 65, part-time work becomes dominant for both genders.

This research note is of significance to developing retirement dynamics, and not just because the Australian Industry Group happens to be the employer shareholder of the trustee for AustralianSuper.

In our previous edition’s focus on Treasury's 2026 Intergenerational Report, we noted how heavily the IGR’s projections lean on older Australians working longer. Participation among the 65-plus group has risen around 9.5 percentage points since the 2002 IGR, and Treasury expects gains among women and older workers to offset the drag of population ageing in the early decades of its projection, before ageing wins out by the end of the 40-year horizon.

Ai Group's research note shows what that offset looks like on the ground, and it carries direct implications for retirement design.

First, the participation dividend is overwhelmingly female and increasingly part-time. Older women have driven most of the participation uplift, but that isn't the same as gaining super balance parity with males. Part-time hours late in a career mean smaller SG contributions in precisely the years balances should be peaking, layered over possible early-career interruptions. Ai Group also lists economic necessity among the drivers, a reminder that working longer is often a response to financial circumstance and not a lifestyle choice.

Second, retirement is becoming a glidepath rather than a cliff end. When part-time work dominates beyond 65, the familiar assumption of a single retirement date mischaracterises a growing share of members.

Cohorting under the Retirement Income Covenant should recognise members who are simultaneously earning, contributing and drawing down, and whose Age Pension entitlements interact with Work Bonus settings. Guidance on transition to retirement, phased drawdown and part-pension interaction will increasingly belong at the centre of retirement income strategies, not its periphery.

Third, industry concentration matters for funds as much as employers. The trade, manufacturing and transport sectors have the oldest workforces and the lowest mobility. Funds whose memberships are concentrated in these sectors potentially face large waves of long-tenured members reaching retirement at similar times with similar needs.

As we argued in the previous edition, with around 2.5 million Australians expected to retire this coming decade, the IGR's long-run arithmetic is only as good as the near-term work trustees do for members retiring now. Ai Group's data tells us who many of those members are, and how they will differ from the fulltime-work-to-full-retirement narrative arc.

Now in its second year, the Epic Retirement Tick, assessed by Chant West in partnership with retirement educator Bec Wilson's Epic Retirement Institute, has just been released. The 2026-27 framework expands from 18 to 20 criteria, of which funds must now meet at least 14 (up from 12 last year), with no enforceable undertakings or additional license conditions outstanding.

Chant West independently assesses Australia's regulated defined contribution funds; the Institute helps shape criteria around what matters to consumers and turns the results into member education.

Eight funds earned the ‘Epic Retirement Tick - powered by Chant West’ for 2026-27, up from six in the inaugural year. ART, Aware Super (now incorporating previous Tick recipient Telstra Super), Brighter Super, Hostplus and UniSuper return, joined this year by Vision Super and the first two retail funds to gain the accreditation, AMP Super and CFS FirstChoice.

The criteria for accreditation span four areas beyond just investment returns:

The results show that even the accredited funds have gaps. All eight met the comprehensive advice and online transaction criteria, but only three (AMP, ART and UniSuper) met the lifetime product standard, only two (CFS and Vision Super) met the drawdown nudge criterion, and only two (ART and Vision Super) offered differentiated solutions by member cohort.

The report stresses that the Tick is not a ranking or a switching recommendation, and cautions members nearing retirement to check for pension commencement bonuses, tax and insurance implications before moving. Its stated aim is to lift industry standards through transparency and consumer pressure. It is thus instructive that some funds reportedly brought forward retirement initiatives after missing out on a Tick last year; acknowledgement that these various third-party assessments, awards, stars, apples and ticks do indeed matter to member acquisition and retention.

Super funds are now facing heightened retirement scrutiny from two directions, and they are impacting in different ways.

The Epic Retirement Tick is consumer-led, annual and binary. It assesses capability: whether a fund offers a lifetime product, affordable advice, decent calculators and fast pension payments. Its power is reputational. A Tick is easy to put on a website and easy for a member to understand, providing an edge in an increasingly competitive market.

APRA's Retirement Reporting Framework (RRF), which we covered in April, works on a different timescale and asks a harder question. With reporting standards due to be finalised by the end of 2026 and the first data collection in late 2027, it will measure not only what funds offer but what members actually do: their take-up of retirement products, actual drawdown rates, and how balances are used by the time accounts close. As we noted then, that finally gives the stranded-balance problem a consistent public measure.

The two overlap more than might be appreciated. The Framework's three indicators (drawdown options above the minimum, access to lifetime income products, access to advice) map closely to Tick criteria. But the Framework then tests whether those offerings change member behaviour. That is where this year's Epic Retirement Tick results are revealing: of eight recipients, only three met the lifetime product standard and only two met the drawdown nudge criterion. A fund can earn the Tick while its members continue to draw at the SISR Schedule 7 minimum. APRA may not be so generous in its assessment of improved retirement outcomes.

While no doubt important as a member-facing signal, funds should avoid ‘chasing the Tick’ while underinvesting in the member data and engagement work the RRF will entail. We therefore urge funds to treat the Tick's criteria as inputs and the Framework’s metrics as the outcomes those inputs should target.

APRA has also signaled careful contextualisation of anything it publishes, engaging industry on presentation methodologies from the second quarter of 2027. While consumer-facing measures like the Tick may therefore remain the more visible scorecard for some time, trustees who satisfy both will be the ones whose retirement strategies hold up to consumer and regulator scrutiny alike.

APRA recently released a consultation on proposals to strengthen superannuation investment governance through a revised SPS 530 Investment Governance prudential standard. While notionally applying to all super trustees, APRA expects the reforms to have the greatest impact on platform trustees, “given their typically broader investment menus, more complex products and greater reliance on financial advisers and other third parties”.

The package responds to the Shield and First Guardian failures and to APRA's 2025 review of platform trustees. Platform products hold around 15% of APRA-regulated super assets, yet their trustees accounted for 70% of announced super enforcement actions in 2025–26. The proposals are broadly group into eight proposals, the first three of which are new, stronger, safeguards.

Submissions close on 3 February 2027. APRA expects to finalise the SPS 530 prudential standard in the first half of 2027, with expected commencement on 1 January 2028.

In our 17th edition for 2026, we described the Government's August reform package as the legislative codification of ASIC's "chain of responsibility" framing, with the trustees who allowed Shield and First Guardian onto their platforms at the rear of that chain. APRA's draft SPS 530 amendment is the prudential counterpart, and it rewrites what trustees at that end of the chain are expected to do.

The draft SPS 530 is more pointed than the summary suggests. Member-level limits apply to every member-directed investment option, including managed investment schemes (whether or not the member is advised), at the lesser of the trustee's limit or the 20% to 30% suggested ceiling. Draft paragraph 36 is blunter still: “an RSE licensee must not offer investment options in excess of that which it can effectively and prudently onboard, monitor and oversee”.

For platforms built on menu breadth, that bites, but the reality is that super investment options have proliferated since the 40,000-odd recorded in the Productivity Commission’s 2019 final report into the super sector, to some 50,000 now according to the consultation material.

The conflicts provisions reach further up the chain. They cover third parties seeking to influence the trustee even where they provide no services to it, which brings promoters and lead generators squarely into scope. Monitoring must now include unusual fund or adviser-related flows, including switching. In responding to ASIC's Report 833, we urged platform trustees to rigorously oversee the indicators that matter most, chiefly holding limits and new-business velocity by adviser. APRA now proposes to make both mandatory.

We also noted that platform trustees face a structural conflict that profit-to-member funds largely don't: they depend commercially on the advisers they are meant to oversee. This draft SPS 530 confronts it. Onboarding an option that fails the trustee's own criteria now requires sign-off from a Board committee or a manager independent of the investment function. And the FAR-accountable investment executive's annual attestation feeds directly into variable remuneration.

Two further features stand out. First, member consent returns in a new form. ASIC has long warned against consent forms as a substitute for oversight, yet the draft requires trustees to seek active consent from members remaining in problem options. Second, APRA can direct independent reviews, and reject the reviewer the trustee appoints.

A 1 January 2028 start leaves platform trustees about 15 months to review investment menus, compliance systems and conflict registers. Those awaiting the final standard will find that runway shorter than it might presently appear.