The $4.1 Trillion Disconnect
Australia’s superannuation industry faces a key paradox. While the largest industry funds boast extensive market reach, with some used by nearly a quarter of advisers surveyed, they also suffer from very poor satisfaction scores from advisers. The 2025 Adviser Ratings Financial Advice Landscape Report shows a massive 116.7-point Net Promoter Score (NPS) gap between the best-performing platform funds and the lowest-ranked industry funds, a gap that has widened from 98.5 points just a year earlier.
This isn’t just a minor issue with service quality; it’s a fundamental crisis that endangers billions in fund flows. The data reveals a strong correlation of 0.78 between adviser satisfaction and fund flow intentions, indicating that current service failures will likely lead to outflows in the future. With major industry funds facing billions in expected adviser-directed outflows and platform leaders attracting nearly $6 billion in positive flow intentions, the message is clear: adviser satisfaction has shifted from a soft metric to the most vital predictor of competitive success.
The Two-Speed Market: Understanding the Satisfaction Hierarchy
The adviser satisfaction landscape reveals two distinct tiers operating at fundamentally different levels of service delivery. Platform-based superannuation funds dominate the satisfaction summit, with leading platforms achieving NPS scores above +50, while others in this cohort maintain strongly positive scores above +25. These aren’t marginal advantages—they represent a complete reimagination of what adviser service can be.
In stark contrast, traditional industry and retail funds occupy the bottom tier, with scores that would be considered catastrophic in any service industry. The bottom-ranked funds score below –50 NPS, while multiple major industry funds sit in negative territory between –20 and –35. Advisers describe these funds in surveys as offering “nightmare” administration and processes that are “actively hostile to advisers.”
The performance gap extends across every measured dimension. Platform providers achieve an average rating of 4.1/5.0 for adviser experience, compared to just 3.2/5.0 for industry funds, a 28% performance differential. On the critical metric of onboarding efficiency, platforms score 3.9/5.0 versus 3.1/5.0 for industry funds. These aren’t rounding errors; they represent fundamental differences in business model architecture.
Mid-sized practices (2–4 advisers) experience the most acute dissatisfaction with industry funds. Some funds see their NPS scores plummet by an additional 40–50 points in this segment compared to their overall average. These firms are large enough to benefit from platform efficiency but too small to command dedicated institutional support from mega-funds, leaving them strategically overlooked and operationally frustrated.
The Experience Inversion: Why Adviser Needs Change with Client Demographics
Perhaps the most significant finding from the 2025 report is what we term the “Experience Inversion”—a fundamental shift in what advisers value based on their client demographics. For advisers focused on accumulator clients, Client Experience ranks as the number one driver of satisfaction with a 99% correlation to NPS. However, for those serving retirees, the priority completely inverts: Adviser Experience becomes paramount (with a 97% correlation), while Client Experience drops to fifth place.
This inversion reflects the radically different demands of serving these segments. Accumulator-focused advisers require streamlined onboarding and intuitive client portals that facilitate easy engagement with their super for younger clients. Their clients have decades to recover from mistakes and relatively simple needs—primarily regular contributions and basic investment selection.
Retiree-focused advisers face an entirely different challenge. They’re managing irreversible risks around sequencing and longevity, requiring sophisticated tools for income layering, complex pension calculations, and real-time reporting capabilities. A processing delay or system error isn’t just inconvenient; it could mean a retiree misses crucial Centrelink deadlines or faces tax implications they can’t afford.
The data reveals another crucial insight: pricing sensitivity drops by 30 percentage points between accumulator and retiree-focused advisers. While younger clients and their advisers exhibit strong price consciousness (a 67% correlation with NPS), this falls to just 37% for retiree-focused advisers. The message is unambiguous: advisers serving retirees will pay premium prices for superior functionality and reliable performance.
The Technology Dividend: Infrastructure as Competitive Advantage
The platform providers’ dominance isn’t accidental; it’s the direct result of two decades of sustained investment in adviser-centric technology. While industry funds built systems optimised for direct-to-member distribution at scale, platforms architected their infrastructure specifically for the advised channel.
The numbers tell the story. Leading platforms achieve ratings of 4.4/5.0 or higher for both adviser experience and overall functionality. Advisers describe these platforms as “seamless” and “built for advisers.” Top performers score above 4.3/5.0 for ease of onboarding, translating to “online applications that take minutes, not days.”
Industry funds, by contrast, struggle with legacy architecture never designed for adviser use. Their average scores of 2.86/5.0 for BDM support reflect not just poor service delivery but fundamental system limitations. Advisers report being unable to get named contacts for issue resolution, facing multi-week delays for simple administrative tasks, and dealing with processes that require manual workarounds for basic functions.
The technology gap extends beyond basic functionality. Platform providers offer sophisticated Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) that seamlessly integrate with planning software, automated data feeds that eliminate manual data entry, and real-time reporting that provides advisers with instant visibility into client positions. Industry funds, operating with closed architectures built for member-direct models, cannot replicate these capabilities through incremental improvements.
Some industry funds have attempted to bridge this gap through digital advice initiatives. One major fund’s digital retirement planner has delivered 68,000 digital Statements of Advice in 20 months, achieving 12% engagement among eligible members, far exceeding the industry standard of 2%. Yet this success in direct-to-member digital delivery hasn’t translated to improved adviser satisfaction, with the same fund recording strongly negative adviser NPS. The disconnect highlights a fundamental truth: excellence in one channel doesn’t automatically transfer to another.
Fund Flows Follow Satisfaction
The relationship between adviser satisfaction and fund flows isn’t theoretical; it’s measurable and massive. ProductREX fund flow modelling, based on 13,401 modelled scenarios over 2024, shows platform providers poised to capture unprecedented inflows, while industry funds face significant outflow pressure.
The leading platform fund is projected to show nearly $6 billion in modelled inflows, with other major platforms collectively generating over $3 billion. These aren’t aspirational targets—they’re the aggregated intentions of advisers planning client transitions based on their experience with these funds.
The flip side is equally dramatic. The industry fund with the highest projected outflow is expected to face $1.36 billion in intended outflows, with most major funds projected to show hundreds of millions in negative flow intentions. For the larger funds, this represents a peak outflow of just 0.37% of their total assets under management—seemingly a manageable amount. But this view dangerously underestimates the strategic risk.
As baby boomers transition to retirement and seek advice for the first time, the trickle of outflows could become a flood. The inertia protecting mega-funds during accumulation evaporates when members need active guidance. What’s manageable today could become existential tomorrow, particularly as the proportion of fund members requiring advice inexorably increases.
The 0.78 correlation between NPS scores and fund flow intentions transforms satisfaction from a brand metric to a financial one. Every point of NPS improvement or decline has measurable consequences for future fund flows. In this context, industry funds’ systematic underinvestment in adviser service represents not just poor customer service but a fundamental threat to their growth trajectory.
Strategic Imperatives: The Path Forward
For all superannuation funds, the path forward requires more than incremental service improvements. The data demands fundamental transformation across three critical dimensions:
Technology Infrastructure Overhaul
Industry funds in particular must move beyond bolt-on solutions to rebuild their core architecture for adviser compatibility. This means developing open APIs, creating real-time data feeds, and building adviser portals tailored to professional workflows rather than member-direct interactions. The investment required is substantial, potentially many tens of millions, but the alternative is accelerating irrelevance in the advised channel.
Service Model Reimagination
The current model of treating advisers as an afterthought must come to an end. Leading platforms maintain dedicated adviser service teams with deep technical knowledge and resolution authority. Industry funds in particular, but all funds need to create similar capabilities, empowering support staff to solve problems rather than simply log them. This cultural shift from seeing advisers as an operational burden to strategic partners is more challenging than the technology transformation.
Segmented Value Propositions
The Experience Inversion demands differentiated approaches for accumulator versus retiree-focused advisers. Funds can’t succeed with one-size-fits-all strategies. For accumulator segments, focus on streamlined digital experiences and competitive pricing. For retiree segments, invest in sophisticated functionality and premium support that justifies higher fees.
Platform providers face their own strategic challenges. Their current advantage won’t last forever; the moment a major industry fund achieves positive adviser NPS, likely by 2026, will trigger an industry-wide service quality race. Platforms, if they want to maintain their lead, must use their current advantage to build insurmountable competitive moats through continuous innovation, particularly in complex retirement solutions where pricing sensitivity is lowest and switching costs are highest.
Both segments must also prepare for regulatory evolution. Current frameworks, such as the Your Future, Your Super performance test, focus on fees and returns while overlooking service quality. Future accountability frameworks will likely incorporate service metrics, including mandatory reporting of adviser NPS scores and operational KPIs. Funds that move proactively to improve these metrics will be best positioned when transparency becomes compulsory.
The Future of Adviser-Fund Relationships
The 116.7-point satisfaction gap represents more than a service quality issue; it’s an unsustainable market failure that demands immediate action. Platform-focused funds currently achieve an average NPS of +31.1, while funds heavily focused on internal advice capabilities average 15.8. The 46.9-point differential between strategic approaches demonstrates that business model choices have a profound impact on adviser satisfaction.
For the 19–20% of superannuation assets held in SMSFs, the stability of this segment despite industry disruption provides an important benchmark. Advised SMSFs achieve median returns 1.2 percentage points higher than unadvised funds, demonstrating the tangible value of professional guidance. This performance premium—potentially worth $696,000 over 20 years for an $800,000 fund—proves that adviser partnerships deliver real member value beyond administrative convenience.
The convergence of regulatory reform, demographic transition, and technological advancement will fundamentally reshape adviser-fund relationships. The winners will be those who move beyond viewing advisers as a distribution channel to embracing them as strategic partners in delivering member outcomes. In an industry managing $4.1 trillion of national wealth, the stakes couldn’t be higher. The time for incremental change has passed—transformation is the only path forward.
For product and technology providers, Adviser Rating’s Category Reports deliver essential insights into platform, superannuation, life insurance, and investment product options. They provide detailed driver correlation analyses, segment preferences, and operational metrics that go beyond basic satisfaction scores. The 2025 Category Report findings highlight the main factors influencing adviser decisions, supported by real product data (including from fund flows and Beddoes) and performance analytics. With this comprehensive information, product providers can make smarter, customised product decisions that suit practice demographics, business models, and operational requirements, helping them to outperform those that rely only on industry-wide satisfaction metrics.
