Australia's super funds are competing harder than ever online. After three years of usability testing and feature audits across nine of Australia's largest funds, one finding stands out above the rest: the industry has converged on the same digital playbook, and it is the wrong one.

‍

The leader's advantage has all but evaporated

AustralianSuper still tops the benchmark on both desktop (0.75) and mobile (0.74), but its desktop score has barely moved in three years, rising just 0.02 points while ART climbed 0.075 and Aware climbed 0.107 over the same period, four to five times faster. The top four desktop funds are now separated by just 0.02 points. Three years ago, one fund clearly outclassed the rest. Today, they look and score almost the same.

In a benchmark this tight, a flat score is a losing score. The funds gaining ground are doing it by systematically closing feature and experience gaps, not by chasing novelty. Any fund that holds still is, in relative terms, sliding backwards.

‍

Funds are building what members value least

The most striking misallocation in this benchmark is chat. Every fund is building it. Almost no member wants it. Live chat ranks as the lowest-rated website feature across all age groups tested, falling to 6.56 out of 10 among 45 to 54 year olds. Members consistently place more value on a comprehensive help centre and on having multiple clear ways to make contact.

Yet chat is exactly where the category competes hardest. Rest covers all ten chat criteria in the audit. Aware covers eight. The investment is flowing to the channel members value least, while the channel they value most goes underfunded.

‍

Help centres are the industry's biggest blind spot

FAQ and help centre depth is weak across the entire field, and it is getting weaker. Field-average coverage fell from 44% in 2024 to 43% in 2026, even as funds poured effort into chat. Not one of the nine funds meets more than four of the seven FAQ depth criteria tested. The preparing-to-apply stage, the moment immediately before a member commits, sits at around 30% coverage and is shrinking.

This is the gap between what funds build and what members repeatedly say they value: a searchable, well-structured help centre that answers questions at the moment of doubt. Because no fund has built a genuinely strong one, the first to do so would not be reaching parity. It would be defining the category standard for self-service.

‍

Not one fund personalises anything

The audit tests whether a site tailors content, remembers prior input, or adapts the return-visit experience. The result is a flat zero, across all nine funds, in all three years of the benchmark. A returning member on the public site sees exactly the same generic homepage as a first-time stranger, at every fund in the study, without exception.

That matters because the youngest members, the 18 to 29 segment funds most want to attract and retain, rank a personalised experience among the features they value most distinctively. Even light personalisation, a remembered preference, a tailored return-visit prompt, a pick-up-where-you-left-off feature, would represent a genuine first-mover differentiator in a category that has collectively ignored it.

‍

Where the real competitive ground sits

The largest collective gains across the benchmark have been in comparison, browsing, and product detail, led by fee transparency which rose 11.1 points since 2024. These areas are fast becoming table stakes. Necessary, but no longer a source of advantage.

The investment options page is where winners are actually pulling away. The funds whose overall scores rose fastest are precisely the ones that transformed how members rate this page. Aware lifted member ratings of its investment comparison page by 1.18 points since 2024. Rest now owns the best-rated comparison page in the field at 8.40 out of 10. AMP's equivalent sits at 5.91, more than a point and a half below every rival, and it is a clear drag on its position.

Feature audits tell you what a page contains. Perception tells you whether it lands. The leaders did not just add comparison features. They made the comparison experience feel clearer and more reassuring, and that is what moved the scores.

Download the full whitepaper to see your fund's benchmark position, where rivals are gaining fastest, and the priority actions behind each finding.