The hidden super tools you’re paying for – but probably ignoring

May 30, 2026 — 5:01am

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The federal budget on May 12 made superannuation the most compelling place to build wealth in Australia, and not because of anything it did to super directly. It’s what it did to everything else.

The reduction in the CGT discount on investments held outside super has fundamentally shifted the maths on wealth building. Shares, investment properties and managed funds in your own name just became considerably less tax-efficient than they were. Super has been crowned the winner.

Which makes what I’m about to tell you either really exciting or mildly embarrassing, depending on how you look at it.

Most Australians are barely using their super fund before they retire. Sure, their employer deposits the 12 per cent contribution. But after that, people largely ignore them, sitting in a default investment option they set years ago and never reviewed, paying for services they have never accessed and leaving advice on the table they’ve already paid for.

The fund is doing the work. The member is nowhere to be seen. And if they did pay attention they would realise they can squeeze more juice out.

Once a year, superannuation research firm Chant West sends its researchers into super funds and interrogates them for weeks. It’s not a tick-box survey or a marketing submission where everyone gets a ribbon, but a forensic examination of what funds are building and delivering for members across every dimension of service.

Your super fund is working hard for you. The question is whether you’re working with it.

It’s primarily an industry exercise recognising genuine excellence, but it gives the rest of us a remarkably useful window into what the leading funds are doing and, more importantly, what you should be looking for in your own fund.

I was at the awards this year, donned a frock, sat among 300 industry people and watched each winner announced to a room that really did care about the result. Here’s what the best funds are building, and what you should use.

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