According to the recently released Roy Morgan report, Satisfaction with Financial Performance of Superannuation in Australia, July 2019 edition, 62.8 per cent of people with their superannuation in an industry fund reported being satisfied with the financial performance of their fund, compared with just 57.4 per cent of retail fund members.

Roy Morgan noted that while industry funds have improved their customer satisfaction level by 1.1 per cent on last year’s finding, retail fund member satisfaction has dropped by 1.2 per cent to current levels.

Top performers

Based on member satisfaction, nine of the top 12 performing funds to July 2019 were earmarked as industry funds.

Cbus was the most highly rated fund, with a 73.2 per cent satisfaction rate, a jump of 8.8 per cent satisfaction on last year’s results.

Catholic Super came in second with a satisfaction level of 71.3 per cent, despite noting the largest decline in customer satisfaction since last year’s survey, down by 2.6 per cent on 2018’s findings.

UniSuper ranked third with a satisfaction level of 69.6 per cent, and saw an increase to satisfaction of 1.2 per cent from last year.

First State Super (68.4 per cent) and Tasplan (68.4 per cent) rounded out the top five.

The only three retail funds to make the top 12 were Macquarie (68.2 per cent), ranked sixth; Mercer (64.4 per cent), ranked ninth; and Suncorp (61.1 per cent), ranked 12th.

Commenting on the findings, Roy Morgan’s CEO, Michele Levine, highlighted that “the satisfaction of members with the performance of their super fund is key to whether a member will continue to hold their super with their current fund or consider choosing a new fund”.

She said the results show that industry funds are stretching their lead over retail funds in improving their member satisfaction.

Noting member satisfaction for industry funds as “the equal highest satisfaction for industry funds since March 2008”, the CEO noted that this marked the onset of the global financial crisis.

“The increase in industry fund satisfaction to some extent tracks the performance of the Australian sharemarkets which reached a new record high in July nearly 12 years after their previous high prior to the GFC,” she said.

“However, the decline in member satisfaction with retail super funds from a year ago by 1.2 per cent to 57.4 per cent shows there is more to managing superannuation than a high-flying sharemarket.”