👉 Background: Australian Super is the largest super fund in Australia, founded back in 2006 through a merger of two other funds. It has over $340 billion of savings under management and more than 3.4 million members around Australia. With big investment balances come very big expectations.

‍👉 What happened: Now, AustralianSuper is being sued by ASIC for "significant delays" in processing death benefit claims of their customers. Those are the claims that are supposed to be paid your chosen beneficiary upon death. In fact, ASIC claims that Australian Super took up to four years to assess almost 7,000 death benefit claims for over 5 years.

‍👉 What else: To make matters worse, ASIC alleges that AustralianSuper kept on taking fees from the accounts of dead customers. ASIC’s now warning that this isn’t just an AustralianSuper problem — it’s a super industry problem. So naturally, ASIC’s got other super funds in its sights too.

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‍What's the key learning?

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‍💡When you’re a critical pillar of the Australian economy, the watchdog will be watching. Currently, there is almost $4 trillion worth of superannuation savings in Australia, and that’s more than the size of the UK’s annual GDP.

💡This AustralianSuper case isn’t even ASIC’s first rodeo with death benefit payments after ASIC ran a lawsuit against another super fund, Cbus, last November for similar failures.

💡ASIC knows that poorly managed super funds and poor processes within super funds can cost everyday Aussies millions. In fact, ASIC reckons Cbus’ failures cost the families of deceased members at least $20 million.