A benchmark of nine leading Australian super funds across 183 desktop features and 116 app features, each weighted by what members actually want, reveals a consistent and uncomfortable pattern. Usability is strong. Features are scarce. And the categories members desire most are precisely the ones the industry delivers least.

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The industry has mastered the wrong problem

Average usability scores across all nine funds sit at 79%. Average combined audit-and-usability scores sit at 41%. That 38-point gap is not a rounding error. It reflects a structural choice the industry has made, largely unconsciously: invest in making existing features smooth rather than building the features members are asking for.

AMP leads the benchmark at 51.6%, followed by Rest at 50.6%. Even at the top, more than 48% of the potential score remains uncaptured. At the bottom, Hesta sits at 33.1% and Vanguard at 34.0%, leaving two-thirds of their potential score untouched. Feature coverage spans 18.5 points from top to bottom, and the gap is widening. A fund that benchmarks well on ease of use can feel it has sorted digital. But usability scores only what exists, and what exists is, on average, less than half of what members want.

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Members want advice and retirement tools. The industry delivers them least.

The Desirability Index sits at the heart of this benchmark, drawing on a survey of 1,018 Australian super fund members. Investment Strategy scores 60.7, the highest member desire in the benchmark. Path to Retirement follows at 57.6. Financial Advice sits at 56.2. Members know what they want: to understand their investments, see their retirement trajectory, and access financial guidance in one place.

The industry delivers none of these at scale. Investment Strategy, the single highest-desire category, averages 48% feature coverage on desktop and falls to 34% on mobile. Path to Retirement sits at 32% desktop and 20% on app. Financial Advice is the most extreme case: 29% on desktop and just 9% on app. The pattern is almost inverted. The categories members rate highest are the ones the industry has invested in least.

One study participant put it plainly: "I'd love to be able to use the app to actually understand what my investment options mean and get some guidance, but there's nothing there. I have to go to a financial planner just to understand the basics."

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The mobile app is where features go to disappear

The superannuation sector has not built mobile apps. It has built stripped-down portals wearing the skin of mobile apps. The gap between desktop and mobile feature coverage is not a matter of platform constraints. It is a matter of investment priority.

The most extreme example is General Information, covering educational content, life stage guidance, webinars, and resources. On desktop, the industry averages 69% coverage. On mobile, the average is 6%. That is a 63-point collapse. The pattern repeats across the most strategically important categories. Insurance sits at 80% on desktop and 39% on app. Path to Retirement drops from 32% to 20%. Financial Advice goes from 29% to 9%. Even Members Dashboard, the landing experience members see every time they open the app, averages 44% on desktop and 27% on app.

The channel weighting in this benchmark reflects actual member behaviour: desktop is weighted at 53.5% and app at 46.5%, essentially equal. Members treat them as two sides of the same experience. When they open the app and find educational content missing, retirement tools absent, and financial guidance gone, they are encountering a product that treats their most-used channel as secondary.

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Three entire feature categories are almost completely absent

Three categories in this benchmark effectively do not exist in Australian super digital. Managing Finances averages 1% coverage industry-wide. Rewards averages 5% on desktop and 6% on app. Personalisation sits at 7% on desktop and 2% on app.

These are not obscure technical capabilities. They are features members use every day in their banking apps, and member desire for all three sits in the mid-50s on the Desirability Index. Managing Finances includes tools like salary sacrifice calculators, contribution modelling, and linked account views. Only AMP has any presence here at all. Personalisation covers notification preferences, dashboard customisation, and content filtering by life stage. Most funds are absent entirely. Rewards and member benefit programs are perhaps the most striking gap: only Australian Retirement Trust has begun building a rewards capability. The rest of the industry has not started.

These three categories represent the single largest unclaimed space in Australian super digital. The fund that builds here first will not be competing with peers. It will be operating in uncontested territory while peers catch up.

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The benchmark is bifurcating

Year-on-year feature change data tells a story of diverging strategic intent. Rest made 26 individual feature gains in the twelve months to Q1 2026, the most aggressive single-year expansion recorded in this benchmark. On mobile alone, Rest gained 8 features in Investment Strategy and Path to Retirement, categories where most of the industry has made no movement at all. Its net gain of 15 features is almost double its nearest competitor.

Hesta's trajectory points in the opposite direction. The fund lost 14 features over the same period, the largest regression in the benchmark. With only 2 gains, its net change is minus 12. Hesta dropped features across security, personalisation, help and support, and members dashboard, exactly the categories where member expectations are rising.

The overall performance gap between the benchmark leader and the bottom now sits at 18.5 points and is widening. Aware Super posted the most efficient improvement in the benchmark with 9 gains and no recorded losses. ART, UniSuper, and AustralianSuper all posted net gains of 5 to 6. The picture is sharply bifurcated. A fund sitting in the middle of this benchmark should not find comfort in being average. The leaders are investing and pulling ahead. The laggards are losing ground. The middle is the most dangerous place to stand still.

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Security is moving. Everything else is not.

One category stands apart in the year-on-year data: security. Eight security feature gains were recorded across multiple brands in 2026, the single most coordinated category-level movement in the study. Multi-factor authentication at login and strong authentication for beneficiary detail changes were gained simultaneously by three or more funds, driven by regulatory pressure and rising member expectations following a wave of financial services breaches in the Australian market.

What this reveals is not a success story but a contrast. The industry can move quickly, at scale, across multiple brands simultaneously, when external pressure requires it. Security compliance achieved what member desire alone has not. Path to Retirement recorded the most total gains in the benchmark at 18, but those gains are concentrated in just two brands. Investment Strategy gained 15, again concentrated. Security's 8 gains are notable precisely because they are spread across five different brands.

Australian super digital is responsive to regulatory pressure and largely unresponsive to member desire. The categories with the highest member desirability scores, Investment Strategy, Financial Advice, and Path to Retirement, are not seeing industry-wide investment. Until advisory and retirement categories attract equivalent urgency, whether regulatory, competitive, or driven by member switching behaviour, the gap between what members want and what they get will persist.

Download the full whitepaper for fund-level scores, feature gap analysis by category, and a prioritised action plan for the next two roadmap cycles.

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