Australian Super Fund Statistics 2026

Market size and concentration

The 19 APRA-regulated industry funds covered by SuperFind collectively hold $1,520B in assets under management. By way of comparison, this is roughly half of the total Australian superannuation market (the full APRA-regulated super system holds approximately $4.1 trillion as at March 2025, with SMSFs holding an additional ~$1 trillion).

The top 3 funds by AUM hold $840B (55.3%) of the 19-fund total:

1. AustralianSuper — $365B AUM
2. Australian Retirement Trust — $300B AUM
3. Aware Super — $175B AUM

All 19 funds by AUM

AUM figures rounded to nearest billion. Member counts are accounts, not unique individuals (the average Australian working-age adult holds 1.3 super accounts).

Fee distribution at $50,000 balance

The annual cost of holding a $50,000 balance in a MySuper default option ranges from $280/year (UniSuper) to $501/year (LegalSuper) — a difference of $221 per year.

The median fund charges approximately $423/year at this balance level. Over a 30-year accumulation phase, with the fee differential reinvested at a 7% net return, the gap between the cheapest and most expensive fund compounds to approximately $21,000 in foregone retirement balance.

At higher balances, the gap widens proportionally — at $250,000, the spread is approximately $842/year. This is because investment fees (which scale with balance) dominate over admin fees (which are usually flat or only weakly scale) at larger balances.

Fees calculated as: annual admin fee (flat) + balance × (admin percentage + investment fee + indirect cost ratio). Excludes performance fees and insurance premiums. Based on MySuper default option for each fund.

10-year performance distribution

Across the 19 covered funds, 10-year annualised net returns (after fees and taxes, before insurance premiums) ranged from 7.0% to 9.0%, with a median of 7.8%. The mean return was 7.87%.

The performance distribution is significant for retirement outcomes:

• Top 5 by 10-year return (avg 8.68% p.a.): Hostplus, AustralianSuper, Australian Retirement Trust, UniSuper, Cbus.
• Bottom 5 by 10-year return (avg 7.22% p.a.): Active Super, Media Super, First Super, Vision Super, LegalSuper.
• Spread: 1.46 percentage points between top 5 and bottom 5 averages.

On a $50,000 starting balance with no further contributions, that spread compounds over 30 years to:

Caveat: past performance is not a reliable indicator of future performance. Funds that ranked top 5 over the past decade may not do so over the next. The compounding gap shown is for illustration of the long-tail impact of percentage-point differences, not a forecast.

Shorter-window performance

• 1-year returns: 10.2% (low) to 12.5% (high), median 10.8%.
• 5-year returns: 7.0% (low) to 9.0% (high), median 7.8%.

AFCA complaints rate

The Australian Financial Complaints Authority (AFCA) publishes the number of superannuation complaints received against each fund per 10,000 members. Across the 19 covered funds with disclosed data, the complaints rate ranged from 2.5 per 10,000 (AustralianSuper) to 5.0 per 10,000 (Media Super), with a median of 3.90.

Complaint rate is a rough proxy for member service quality, but it should be read alongside the fund's member count — a large fund with a thin call-centre may show more complaints in absolute terms simply because of scale. The per-10,000 normalisation helps but isn't perfect.

2025 APRA Performance Test — all covered funds passed

The Annual Superannuation Performance Test, introduced under the Your Future Your Super reforms in 2021, is the legislated benchmark all MySuper products are measured against. In 2025, all 52 MySuper products in the Australian market passed the test — the second year in a row with zero failures. All 19 of the 19 SuperFind-covered funds were among the passes.

See our full pillar guide on the 2025 results, methodology, and what passing actually means: 2025 APRA Performance Test — Every MySuper Fund's Result.

Methodology

All figures on this page are computed from SuperFind's underlying fund database, which is curated from publicly available sources:

• AUM and member counts: APRA Quarterly Superannuation Performance publication (most recent release).
• Fees: Each fund's most recent Product Disclosure Statement (PDS) and Target Market Determination (TMD).
• Returns: Funds' published MySuper net returns, cross-checked against APRA MySuper Heatmap data.
• AFCA complaints: AFCA Datacube quarterly publications.
• APRA Performance Test: APRA's published annual performance test results (latest: 29 August 2025).

Specific calculation methodology — including how total fees are constructed at each balance level, how return periods are normalised, and which fields are estimated versus directly sourced — is documented at SuperFind methodology.

What this dataset doesn't cover

• Self-managed super funds (SMSFs): SMSFs hold approximately $1 trillion in member balances but are not APRA-regulated MySuper products, so they are not directly comparable to the funds in this dataset.
• Retail and wholesale funds: Funds operated by major financial institutions (AMP, Macquarie, Mercer, BT, Colonial First State, Insignia) are not currently in the SuperFind dataset. Their MySuper products are included in APRA's broader performance test (52 MySuper products tested in 2025) but not in the 19-fund subset above.
• Choice products and non-MySuper investment options: All return figures above are for each fund's MySuper default option (typically a "balanced" or "lifecycle" asset allocation). Members in choice products (e.g. high-growth, indexed, ESG-screened) will see different returns.
• Insurance premiums: Default insurance inside super (death, TPD, income protection) is excluded from fee calculations. Premium costs vary substantially by age and occupation.

Related

• 2025 APRA Performance Test — Every MySuper Fund's Result
• Best Super Funds in Australia 2026
• All 19 fund reviews
• Compare any two funds side-by-side
• Methodology — how we calculate fees and rankings