Opinion
Late last year – as an experiment – I clicked on a Facebook ad about superannuation. It was bright, urgent and confident. It warned that every year I delayed reviewing my super could cost me seven figures in retirement, and that hundreds of dollars were slipping away daily without me knowing. All I had to do was enter my details to get the “four steps” to beat time. Within minutes, my phone rang.
A businessman explained he ran a referral service connecting people to what he called the best financial adviser for them. He’d previously been a director of one firm he particularly liked, and my first appointment would be free.
I was referred on. A young adviser called to pre-qualify me. His questions were simple: Was I over 45? Did I have an Australian regulated super fund? Yes and yes, so I “qualified” for a phone-based discovery meeting after which a Statement of Advice could follow. No fee information, no quote, nothing until later.
Forms arrived the next day requesting super balances, member numbers and passport details. My lead generator rang again to check I was excited. That’s when I paused.
His answers to my questions were polite and over-rehearsed. But the structure was clear: a social media ad generated a lead, the lead was referred to an advice house for a fee, and the process began with an assumption that switching my super was likely.
It felt wrong. And it came right as First Guardian and Shield were imploding following a scheme which allegedly enticed more than 12,000 ordinary Australians into moving $1 billion of retirement savings into complex and risky funds.
Since then, my Facebook feed has been flooded with super-switching ads. I also get ads offering me clients, as though I’m an adviser looking to buy leads. So the practice is still proliferating, and people must be going down these funnels while advisers continue to buy the leads. It needs to stop.
Everyday Australians need to understand that finding a financial adviser through Facebook or any digital platform is not the best way. And that switching super is not something to do on a whim, or on the advice of a stranger from the internet, no matter how slick they appear.
This week, ASIC confirmed that this kind of lead-generation is under serious review, particularly where it inappropriately or unnecessarily encourages consumers to switch super. The regulator has published a list of 44 companies it believes are involved, covering both advice firms and referral companies. It has also commenced court action in a number of super-switching matters where consumers were moved into high-risk investments.
ASIC Commissioner Alan Kirkland described the pattern plainly: “It starts with a social media ad with a form you fill out, then you get a telemarketing call, and then a recommendation to switch super into a different structure.”
The most common move is out of an APRA-regulated fund and into an SMSF or retail platform loaded with higher-risk investments. His warning to consumers is stark: “If you see an ad on social media, and they’re asking you to hand over your contact details so someone can talk to you about your super, that’s immediately something you should be cautious about because there have been thousands and thousands of cases where that’s led people to lose their retirement savings.”
The firm I was referred to appears on ASIC’s list. Its inclusion doesn’t imply wrongdoing, but it confirms the funnel I stepped into is far from isolated.
This matters because superannuation isn’t a niche product. Every working Australian has one, and the country’s retirement savings pool now sits about $4.5 trillion. Most people (about 62 per cent) are in large APRA-regulated MySuper funds built for ordinary Australians who don’t want to spend their weekends analysing markets or pay high ongoing fees. These funds are benchmarked, reviewed, compared by the Australian Taxation Office’s YourSuper tool, and named publicly if they underperform.
When someone moves out of that environment into a retail platform or SMSF, the ground shifts. Retail platforms don’t face the same performance tests, and SMSFs sit outside APRA supervision entirely, regulated by the ATO instead.
Before you switch your super, pause and ask yourself:
- How has my current fund actually performed in accumulation using independent tools such as the ATO YourSuper comparison site or ASIC’s Moneysmart resources?
- How do my funds services stack up as I approach retirement using the Epic Retirement Tick criteria (the only assessment available for retirement)? Are you happy that they are providing you with what you need?
- What insurance cover do I currently hold, and will I lose or reset it if I move? Don’t neglect this.
- What are all the ongoing fees in the proposed structure – advice, platform and investment management?
- Does the adviser or their firm have any ownership interest in the products or ongoing services being recommended?
- Did this process begin with a social media advertisement or an unsolicited call that created urgency?
- If I am being encouraged to establish an SMSF, do I understand that this removes APRA supervision and makes me responsible as trustee?
If those questions cannot be answered clearly and calmly, it is a sign to slow down.
Once you’re in those structures, comparing fees and performance becomes genuinely hard because you’re no longer looking at one publicly benchmarked product. You’re looking at a customised mix of investments, layered fees and decisions made by your adviser’s firm.
Here’s what most people don’t see: most advice firms have a preferred way of doing things, a platform they like, model portfolios they run repeatedly, a system. That’s how businesses work, but it means the conversation can quietly shift from “should you switch out of your super at all?” to “how do we fit you into our advice and investment system?” without the client ever noticing.
Advisers are legally required to act in their clients’ best interests. But unless you understand how advice firms operate, you may never think to ask the simplest question: was staying put ever seriously on the table?
It’s one that should be asked more often.
Retirement is an emotional time. Whether you have “enough” and whether you’re in the right fund pushes many Australians towards advice, and good advice can be genuinely transformative, especially as you move from saving to drawing an income. The problem isn’t advice. It’s how some of it is being marketed and sold, and how easily financial anxiety can be channelled into a sales funnel.
So if you see one of those ads, don’t click and don’t hand over your details. If you want advice, seek it out deliberately. Start with your own super fund and find out what support they offer.
Ask people you trust who they use. Meet more than one adviser. Ask how they’re paid, what investment model they use, and whether staying in your current fund is genuinely on the table and why, or why not.
Then do some research of your own and take your time. Super is too important to move because you felt afraid and clicked naively.
Bec Wilson is author of the bestseller How to Have an Epic Retirement and the newly released Prime Time: 27 Lessons for the New Midlife. She writes a weekly newsletter at epicretirement.net and hosts the Prime Time podcast.
- Advice given in this article is general in nature and is not intended to influence readers’ decisions about investing or financial products. They should always seek their own professional advice that takes into account their own personal circumstances before making any financial decisions.
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Bec Wilson is the author of How To Have An Epic Retirement and writes a weekly newsletter for pre- and post-retirees at epicretirement.net.
