One trustee carried out 21 checks on adviser fee documents across a 15-month review period. Of those, 75 per cent turned up problems. Three of the six trustees reviewed had at least one month with no checks at all, and fees kept leaving member accounts anyway.
Those numbers come from a report by the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC), explained to The Age by Commissioner Simone Constant. ASIC looked at six of the country’s largest platform trustees, which together safeguard $400 billion of retirement savings. Across the three obligations it expects them to meet, it found “serious and persistent failings”.
What a platform is
A platform lets a financial adviser hold a client’s super, shares, managed funds and ETFs in one place, with reporting and tax tracking built in. Members rarely ask for one. The adviser suggests it. According to The Age’s columnist, most advisers she speaks to would sooner put clients on a platform than leave them in a low-cost industry super fund. Advisers earn an annual fee, usually tied to the amount held in managed investments.
Platforms are the fastest-growing corner of super. Constant told the paper that in the 10 years to June 2025, member benefits on platforms rose more than three-fold, from $123 billion to $396 billion, while the wider sector merely more than doubled. Advice fees taken from platform accounts rose four-fold to $2.23 billion.
Three expectations
ASIC wants trustees to keep members’ money safe from bad conduct, which means vetting the investments on offer. It wants members to get real value for the services charged to their super, and to understand them. And it wants trustees to deliver the investment, member and retirement services that sit at the core of the job. The expectations are “not complicated or tricky”, the column said.
Where trustees fell short
Fee caps came first. Trustees are meant to limit what advisers can charge to a member’s account, but many set caps well above what ASIC considers sensible. Two years ago ASIC published a report that found caps as high as $20,000. Since then some platforms have raised theirs. One trustee admits to a $25,000 cap, and another plans one of $30,000. Constant said ASIC found an adviser who targeted members with balances of around $10,000, and on average half of each balance went to fees.
Document checks came second. Each time an adviser charges a fee, a record should show that advice was given, that the adviser is licensed and that nothing about the fee looks off. Trustees are supposed to sample those records regularly. The test is not whether the advice was good, only that the basics are in order. ASIC found the checks fundamentally neglected at most of the six.
The third gap was monitoring for warning signs: a sudden spike in new members arriving through one adviser, odd patterns in investment flows, or fee structures that appear built to avoid alerts. These are the same signals that, if acted on earlier, might have protected some of the 11,000 Australians who lost more than $1.1 billion in the Shield and First Guardian collapses. Asked whether the failures at the six trustees are the kind that made those collapses possible, Constant was clear, the column said. The controls matter, and ASIC’s patience has run out over trustees that still lack them. The trustees were not named.
Beyond platforms
The same duties to oversee advisers apply to any super fund, whether industry, retail or platform, that deducts advice fees from member accounts. Industry funds are losing members at a notable rate as advisers move clients to platforms. The columnist pointed out that an adviser running a platform-based practice has a strong financial reason to recommend a switch, whether or not it suits the client.
She also said platforms can be the right choice for people with complex needs or large balances, provided the advice is tailored, the fees are reasonable and the trustee supervises the account properly. Her suggested questions for any adviser proposing a platform: what makes it right for my situation and retirement goals, what will I be charged now and later, and how does it compare directly with the best-performing low-cost super funds available to me?
