Australian super funds in numbers — what APRA's statistics actually say

Pensions: all tracked plans · Australian super in numbers · Private market performance · the PE statistics · what plans disclose · where they diverge

Australia makes its pension system unusually visible. Once a year the regulator, APRA, publishes fund-level statistics for every super fund it regulates — assets, returns, fees, and (since 2022) an expenditure breakdown down to individual marketing payees. For the year to 30 June 2025, the 73 funds in the collection held A$3.05tn across 22.9m member accounts. This page reads those spreadsheets so you don't have to.

A system consolidating fast

The single biggest structural fact: the number of APRA-regulated funds keeps shrinking — 1,137 funds lodged returns in 2004; 72 did for 2025. Mergers do most of the work: trustees fold smaller funds into larger ones, chasing scale on costs. For a member this mostly arrives as a letter saying your fund has a new name — and it is why the biggest funds keep getting bigger.

What funds returned

The median fund's one-year rate of return (investment earnings after investment costs, at whole-of-fund level — your own option will differ):

Two of the last six years were negative — worth remembering when a single good year is being sold hard. Longer horizons matter more; the 10-year league below is the better lens.

What funds spend — marketing, pay, related parties

Since 2022 APRA has published each fund's expenditure in detail. Sector-wide, the June-balance-date funds spent A$514.3m on marketing in the latest year — up 25% since the year to 30 June 2023:

The split is not what most people guess: not-for-profit funds (industry and public-sector funds) spent A$402.3m on marketing against A$112.0m for the for-profit (retail) funds. Scale explains part of it — the not-for-profit side manages A$2.20tn for 16.9m accounts — and competition for members the rest.

A related-party payment goes to a company connected to the fund's own trustee or owner group — an in-house administrator, the parent bank's asset manager. It is disclosed, not improper; the reason APRA publishes it is so someone can ask whether the price was a market price. Sector-wide these came to A$4.6bn in the funds' latest reported years.

One number that is easy to headline and easy to get wrong: political donations. In the three reporting years this expenditure collection covers, no fund reported a political donation — the table APRA reserves for them is empty. Payments to industrial bodies (unions and employer associations, A$11.8m sector-wide in the latest year) are disclosed separately and are not donations.

Where the marketing money went

And the single most telling join in the collection: 41.6% of all marketing spend went to related parties — the funds' own service companies and owner groups, not independent agencies or ad platforms.

The expenditure collection names payees. The largest marketing payees across all funds in the year to 30 June 2025 — note how many are the funds' own service companies (marketing spend routed through a related entity), alongside ad platforms and agencies:

The largest related-party payees

Across all expense categories (administration, investment management, insurance administration — not just marketing), the related entities receiving the most from the funds connected to them:

The annual performance test

Since 2021 the regulator has tested super products against a benchmark portfolio built from each product's own strategy — fail twice in a row and the product must close to new members. It is the sharpest accountability tool in the system, and the results are public. As at 30 June 2024: 57 MySuper products were tested and every one passed; 1,013 choice (trustee-directed) options were tested and 88 failed across 2 funds. Per-fund test results are on each fund's page.

Insurance inside super — premiums in, claims out

Most member accounts carry default insurance, paid from balances. In the funds' latest reported year, 83 funds collected A$6.4bn in premiums and paid A$7.5bn in claims (claims paid in a year often relate to earlier years' cover — a cash-flow picture, not a loss ratio). Two numbers worth knowing: only 2 funds place cover with an insurer connected to their own group, and across each fund's weakest cover type the median claims admittance rate is 89.2% — roughly one finalised claim in ten declined. The full analysis — admittance and cost leagues, the insurers behind the funds, and the flows-based sustainability read — is in Insurance inside super; per-fund rates are on each fund's page.

League tables

The ten largest funds

Best 10-year returns (funds over A$10bn)

Ten years smooths luck out of the comparison; the size floor keeps it to funds most readers could actually join:

Highest marketing spend per member account (funds over 50,000 accounts)

The gender gap, fund by fund

The last year APRA published fund-level member demographics in this collection was the year to 30 June 2022. Across the 64 funds with a published split, the median fund's female members held an average balance 16.3% lower than its male members — the pay gap, compounded by career breaks, arriving at retirement as a savings gap. The ten largest funds with a published split:

Fund-by-fund pages: find your fund · the same lens on US plans: private market performance statistics.