ENGAGE 2026: Member Engagement, Growth and Outcomes Across the Member Lifecycle is a leading two-day superannuation conference taking place on 27–28 August 2026 in Melbourne. The event brings together senior industry leaders to explore how super funds can better understand, engage, and support members—from their first contribution through to retirement income. It focuses on redefining engagement beyond activity, shifting towards measurable outcomes, financial wellbeing, and long-term member value.
Across keynotes, panel discussions, fireside chats, and interactive roundtables, ENGAGE 2026 will address critical challenges including member segmentation, personalisation, retention, retirement engagement, regulatory expectations, and the growing role of digital tools and AI in delivering scalable, meaningful member experiences.
- Actionable strategies to improve member outcomes
Learn how to move beyond traditional engagement metrics to frameworks that drive real behavioural change and financial wellbeing. - Insights into data-driven personalisation
Understand how leading funds are leveraging data, segmentation, and trigger-based communications to deliver relevant, timely engagement. - Clarity on regulatory expectations
Gain practical guidance on ASIC and APRA requirements, including retirement communications and member inclusion. - Strategies to improve retention and growth
Discover how engagement directly impacts member loyalty—especially for high-balance and pre-retirement segments. - Practical approaches to closing the advice gap
Explore how funds can use digital tools, AI, and scalable guidance models to support members who may never access financial advice. - Real-world perspectives and peer learning
Participate in interactive roundtables, hear from industry peers, and gain insights from real member experiences. - Future-focused innovation insights
Examine how behavioural science, AI, and hybrid engagement models are shaping the future of superannuation.
ENGAGE 2026 is designed for senior professionals across the superannuation and financial services ecosystem, including:
- Member Engagement & Experience Leaders
- Marketing, Communications & Digital Strategy Executives
- Customer Insights, Data & Analytics Professionals
- Retirement & Product Strategy Leaders
- Advice, Guidance & Financial Wellbeing Teams
- Operations & Transformation Executives
- Compliance, Risk & Regulatory Professionals
- Trustees, Board Members & Senior Executives (C-suite)
- Technology, CX & Innovation Leaders
It is also highly relevant for consultants, solution providers, and fintech organisations supporting super funds in enhancing member engagement and retirement outcomes.
Engage 2026 Summit offers sponsor an excellent opportunity to demonstrate thought-leadership and
leverage networking opportunities to build brand-value amongst your target audience. If you would like to know more about sponsorship, exhibition and business development opportunities please just get in touch with us – sponsorship@ibrc.com.au
Registration and Morning Coffee
Opening Remarks from the Chair Stephen Huppert
UNDERSTANDING MEMBERS, BUILDING RELATIONSHIPS AND DRIVING ENGAGEMENT
• Why most funds cannot define engagement precisely, measure it meaningfully, or agree on how much of it is actually desirable
• Activity is not engagement, engagement is not outcomes, and more engagement is not always better
• What the research tells us about when engagement helps members — and when it harms them
• A new framework for thinking about engagement as confidence, behaviour and outcomes rather than activity
• Why generic communications are no longer adequate — and what regulators now expect instead
• How leading funds are using data to identify life stage, vulnerability, retirement proximity and engagement level
• Translating member understanding into communications that are timely, relevant and trusted
• The practical barriers to genuine segmentation — data capability, governance and organisational will
Moderator: TBA Panellists: TBA
10:20-10:50 Morning Coffee & Networking
• Why profit-to-member funds are increasing marketing expenditure while losing competitive flows
to retail platforms spending less
• How digital-first platforms and adviser-focused businesses are building the capabilities that are shifting member switching behaviour
• What the data reveals about who is gaining ground and how — and what profit-to-member funds are missing
• What this means for how funds think about member engagement, digital investment and retention strategy
• How fund leaders are connecting engagement strategy to retention outcomes, particularly
for members approaching retirement
• What the data reveals about when and why members leave — and what keeps high-balance
members loyal
• Why the competition for retiring members is intensifying and what funds need to do differently to win it
• How engagement investment is being prioritised, evaluated and reported at board and executive level
Moderator: TBA Panellists: TBA
• Why ASIC found no fund had developed specific retirement communications for First
Nations members — and what that means for the industry
• The real barriers to serving First Nations members well: cultural safety, trust, language and the limitations of digital-first engagement
• What genuine practice looks like — the approaches, partnerships and investments
that are making a difference
• What the industry needs to do differently, and what funds can act on now
12:35-1:25 Lunch and Networking
• Why measuring engagement through balances and activity tells funds where members are — but not how they got there or whether they can improve
• The key drivers of financial health: capability, resilience, wellbeing, stress and hardship — and how they interact
• How a financial health framework changes the way funds design support, measure progress and demonstrate impact
• Practical implications for engagement strategy, member communications and measuring what actually matters
• What ASIC's findings mean in practice — and why acknowledging the challenge is no longer sufficient
• Designing communications and support for members with low financial literacy, CALD
backgrounds, financial hardship and limited digital access
• How funds are resourcing and prioritising inclusion — what it costs, what it returns and how it is governed
• Moving from one-size-fits-all to genuinely differentiated member support: what leading funds are doing differently
Moderator: TBA Panellists: TBA
14:40-15:10 Afternoon Tea and Networking
• Why the most effective member communications arrive at the right moment, not on a broadcast schedule
• How funds are identifying the life events and transitions that prompt the highest-value
communications
• Using data and automation to enable personalisation at scale while maintaining privacy and trust
• The practical barriers to trigger-based engagement — and how leading funds are
overcoming them
Moderator: TBA Panellists: TBA
• Where are the biggest gaps between what your members need and what they currently receive?
• What are the real internal barriers — data, capability, legal risk appetite, budget,
organisational alignment?
• What would make the most difference in the next 12 months?
• Table reporting back: priority themes and shared challenges across the industry
Facilitator: Stephen Huppert
Day 1 Closing Remarks from the Chair
Networking Drinks
Registration and Morning Coffee
• What the Mercer Shaping Super 2026 report reveals about fund priorities, member outcomes and the gap between the two
• The retention challenge: which funds are losing members and why, and what engagement
strategies are actually making a difference
• The retirement imperative: what the data says about how well — or poorly — funds are
supporting members through the transition
• Where the industry needs to focus attention and investment to lift outcomes for retiring and retired members
• Why the 55–70 cohort requires a fundamentally different engagement model — and what that model looks like in practice
• How leading funds are identifying members approaching retirement and designing
communications for the critical transition points
• Moving beyond the pre-retirement seminar: what meaningful retirement engagement actually requires
• What ASIC and APRA now expect of funds in retirement engagement — and where most are still falling short
10:20 – 10:50 Morning Coffee and Networking
• What ASIC's review of retirement communications actually found — the specific gaps, the better practices and the funds that are leading
• The governance frameworks, member cohort strategies and measurement approaches that
ASIC expects to see
• Why one-size-fits-all retirement communications aimed at pre-retirees is no longer acceptable — and what replacing it requires
• Practical steps funds can take now to meet the regulator's expectations and avoid being in the next review's cautionary examples
• The scale of the problem: how many members will retire without personal financial advice, and what the Retirement Income Covenant requires funds to do about it
• What funds can do right now within current rules — the guidance, support and communications that are permissible today
• What DBFO Tranche 2 will unlock when it passes: targeted nudges, expanded intrafund advice topics and scaled personalised prompts
• How funds are building strategy and capability in an environment of genuine legislative uncertainty
Moderator: TBA Panellists: TBA
• How funds are using digital guidance tools and AI-assisted communications to support members who will never see a financial adviser
• What tools and approaches are genuinely shifting member behaviour and building retirement confidence — and what has failed to deliver
• How AI fits into the guidance model without crossing into personal advice territory
• The design principles that separate effective digital guidance from digital noise
12:30 – 1:20 Lunch and Networking
• Why members with adequate balances fail to convert to income streams — and what the behavioural research tells us about retirement-phase inertia
• The cognitive biases that shape retirement decision-making and how fund communications
can work with them rather than against them
• What nudges, defaults and framing approaches are evidence-based and what is simply borrowed from accumulation-phase thinking
• Practical interventions that fund communications and product teams can act on
Moderator: TBA Panellists: TBA
• When members need a human voice — the moments where digital self-service falls short and human support is irreplaceable
• What scaled human guidance looks like in practice: contact centre models, hybrid advice, and the role of intra-fund advice
• How funds build the trust that converts a digital interaction into genuine member action
• What leading funds have learned about getting the human-digital balance right — and what they would do differently
14:35 Afternoon Tea and Networking
• Real members in or approaching retirement share their experience of engaging with their superannuation fund
• What they understood, what confused them, and what they needed from their fund but didn't receive
• What finally prompted them to act — and what they wish had happened earlier
• A moderated conversation that challenges delegates to see the member experience from the outside in
• What do you stop? Identifying the engagement activities that consume resources without improving member outcomes
• What do you start? The highest-priority initiatives based on everything heard across two days
• What do you scale? The approaches that are working and deserve greater investment and reach
• Table reporting back: commitments and priorities delegates are taking home
Facilitator: Stephen Huppert
16:45 – 17:00 Closing Remarks from the Chair
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