The corporate regulator has warned that some superannuation funds remain unprepared to handle rising volumes of death benefit claims, despite two years of industry scrutiny and repeated calls for reform.
In a new review released this week in Report 831 – Delivering on death benefits: Have super trustees stepped up? – ASIC found that while many trustees had improved their claims handling practices, others had failed to implement basic changes aimed at reducing delays and improving outcomes for beneficiaries.
The review found internal complaints about death benefit delays fell by 53% between early 2024 and late 2025. However, death benefit claim volumes increased by 10% in the 12 months to October 2025 and are expected to continue rising as Australia’s population ages.
ASIC Commissioner Simone Constant said the pace of improvement across the industry remained uneven.
“There is no excuse for delays in delivering better outcomes for death benefit claimants,” she said.
ASIC reviewed the reported progress of 45 superannuation trustees and identified several areas requiring attention, including:
- Measuring end-to-end claim processing times
- Improving communication with claimants
- Reviewing risk settings for low-value claims, and
- Providing better support for First Nations members and people facing language barriers
The regulator said some trustees had still not implemented basic process improvements recommended in previous ASIC reviews.
ASIC warned that trustees failing to improve their performance could face increased regulatory scrutiny, particularly as the Federal Government considers introducing mandatory member service standards.
“Fund members have a right to expect claims will be handled efficiently, honestly and fairly,” Constant said.
ASIC said it would continue monitoring trustee performance and would consider enforcement action where member service failures persist.
The review forms part of ASIC’s multi-year examination of member services in the superannuation sector, which began after a surge in complaints relating to death benefit claims.
The regulator is now assessing how effectively trustees use complaints data to identify systemic issues and improve service delivery.
Early findings indicate that five of the 10 trustees currently being reviewed had not identified a single systemic issue through analysis of complaints data, while at least one trustee had failed to analyse complaints data at all.
The findings follow several recent enforcement actions by ASIC, including a $23.5m Federal Court penalty against Cbus over delays in handling death benefit and TPD claims, and civil penalty proceedings against AustralianSuper over alleged delays in processing death benefit claims.
