TRR #6 (2026): Budget wish lists, longevity products, and the adviser pipeline

Welcome to TRR #6 (2026), closing out the first quarter. A common thread runs through this edition: the retirement system is edging toward more flexible, guided and data-enabled outcomes, but practical frictions remain. We look at what that means through the lens of super fund pre-Budget submissions, the pension-phase rollout of MLC Retirement Boost^TM, and consultation on revised adviser standards.

The annual policy positioning that is the pre-Budget submission process is now closed.

A common theme in several pre-Budget submissions this year is the push to make retirement less administratively fragmented and more responsive to how members actually retire: gradually, with mixed income sources, and often with incomplete information.

Of the submissions made public, two in particular stood out for their retirement implications.

AustralianSuper’s submission contained six proposals aimed at reducing friction in the retirement system and giving trustees more capacity to support better member outcomes. These included:

Taken together, these proposals point to a more intervention-capable retirement system, one where trustees can do more than simply make products available and wait for members to act.

HESTA’s submission shared some concerns and suggestions, with a similar call for members to be able to top-up retirement income stream accounts with employment income.

This is a widely-acknowledged ‘sand in the gears’ issue, with many older members running one or more account-based pensions alongside a super account; as the only way to combine the former is to first roll-back into accumulation before commencing a new retirement-phase account.

Removing this complexity would better reflect the lived experience of today’s ageing members - who may wind down, retire, re-engage with work (part-time or full-time) before they, at some future point, fully and finally re-retire.

HESTA’s submission also called for a two-way data-sharing framework between super funds and government agencies, to allow funds to better understand member needs, and enable more targeted communications, products and tools (as broadly encouraged in the finalised Best Practice Principles - which we recently covered).

Where HESTA adds a differentiating lens is on women and carers. That is unsurprising given the fund’s membership profile: around 80 per cent female, with relatively high rates of part-time work and a concentration in health and community services.

Modelling by the fund has shown unpaid care undertaken by members decreases retirement savings by around 16 per cent. HESTA is therefore calling on the Government to support carers in returning to paid work by exploring options for a ‘carers credit’ model for the super system.

The fund has supported research into such a model where a primary carer’s super account might be credited during periods of significant work interruption.

Insignia Financial has unveiled a pension-phase extension to its Retirement Boost^TM product, completing a roll-out that commenced in mid-2025.

The product is available on the MLC Expand platform, making it one of the first new solutions released since the operational separation of MLC from NAB-based systems in late 2024.

Developed with TAL and Challenger, the product was first soft-launched in savings phase as MLC Retirement Boost (Super) in August 2025. The pension-phase version was released to advisers earlier this month.

According to adviser materials we have reviewed, MLC Retirement Boost (Pension) can be used either as a standalone solution providing tax-free income for life, or alongside an account-based pension. Like other recent longevity-linked retirement products, it has been designed to meet the SISR definition of an innovative superannuation income stream, which may improve Age Pension means-test outcomes for some members depending on structure and circumstances.

As with other products in this emerging category, some of the retirement income and social security benefits may begin to build while the member is still in super phase, before the pension-phase income stream commences.

Member-facing marketing we have seen suggests that MLC Retirement Boost may provide ‘up to 60% more income in retirement when combined with the Age Pension’, although that outcome is explicitly dependent on individual circumstances and personal advice.

MLC Retirement Boost joins AMP’s Lifetime Boost (see our 30 January review) and Allianz Guaranteed Income for Life (AGILE) (as covered in our 13 February review) as yet another product built to meet the ‘innovative lifetime income stream’ criteria.

In one sense, this should not surprise, as the enabling regulations have been around since 2017. That was a necessary but insufficient impetus. The stronger catalyst has clearly been the Retirement Income Covenant, in force since July 2022, which requires funds to consider longevity risk across their membership.

Combine these two factors with some lateral thinking and these solutions are entering a market where advisers are now receptive to using them (as we have previously noted) for mid-to-high balance households navigating the Age Pension ‘taper trap’.

That is both a strength and a weakness of these products. Strength because such innovations are to be welcomed, and will hopefully spur other funds to develop their own variants to better serve those members who may benefit from some level of longevity risk hedging.

And a weakness because combined longevity risk + social security-based retirement income solutions are so complex that their features, benefits, costs and trade-offs are not readily understood by the average member without the provision of personalised advice. Which at present is a supply-side constraint.

Reducing this complexity barrier, either through product engineering or engagement strategies (guidance services) should be a high priority for forward-thinking funds, from both a member servicing and retention lens.

The Minister for Financial Services, Dr. Daniel Mulino, has released a Treasury consultation on proposed reforms to educational standards for financial advisers.

This consultation is ostensibly being undertaken as part of the DBFO suite of reforms, but is also linked to the recently-closed consultation on enhancing oversight of managed investment schemes, and possible further consultation on measures to create a safer framework for super switching (in light of the Shield and First Guardian master trust scandals).

The consultation paper acknowledges that the current adviser education framework is failing to build and deliver a sustainable pipeline of new financial advisers, exacerbating the supply/demand imbalance for quality financial advice, some three years on from the finalisation of the Quality of Advice report.

In 2019 adviser numbers peaked at just under 28,000. The latest data shows some 15,000 ‘relevant providers’ on ASIC’s financial advisers register, with many leaving due to an inability or unwillingness to lift their educational qualifications to the post-2019 (FASEA) standards.

The Government now proposes to replace the requirement for a pre-approved degree (covering 11 prescribed knowledge areas) with three discrete, stackable requirements:

New entrants must hold a completed AQF Level 7 degree in any discipline from an Australian higher education provider. A Graduate Certificate (AQF Level 8) will not satisfy this requirement.

New entrants must complete at least four subjects at AQF Level 7 or higher from a proposed list of eligible areas. The list covers such topics as superannuation, estate planning, banking and investments, accounting, economics, mathematics, and statistics, as well as newer areas like fintech, trust law and actuarial science.

All new entrants must complete four subjects specifically accredited by the Minister at AQF Level 7 or higher. Three are carried over from the existing curriculum - Ethics for Professional Advisers, Financial Advice Regulatory and Legal Obligations and Client and Consumer Behaviour.

A new fourth subject, Financial Advice Fundamentals, is being introduced to provide entrants with a baseline understanding of the financial advice process and the four core technical areas of superannuation, investments, insurance/risk and estate planning.

Interestingly, taxation and commercial law subjects are being removed from the mandatory curriculum on the basis that not all financial advisers provide tax advice (these will remain mandatory for tax agents and Qualified Tax Relevant Providers at AQF Level 5).

The existing professional standards including the professional year, financial adviser exam and CPD requirements, remain unchanged.

Interested parties have until 17 April to make submissions here.

The direction is sensible. Lowering the entry barrier while retaining meaningful standards should, over time, help rebuild the adviser pipeline. But ‘over time’ is doing a lot of heavy lifting here.

Under the proposed framework, a new entrant needs a bachelor degree, four financial concepts subjects, four accredited advice subjects, a professional year and the adviser exam before they can practise unsupervised.

Which brings us back to the thread running through the rest of this edition. The retirement system is generating increasingly sophisticated products: longevity solutions, Age Pension optimisation, flexible drawdown structures, while the human infrastructure to help members navigate them remains constrained.

Adviser education reform is a necessary supply-side response, but it operates on a five-to-seven year lag. While waiting for adviser numbers to recover, funds must continue to roll-out scalable guidance services, digital triage and engagement strategies that meet members where they are now, not where the advice pipeline might be in 2030.