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If we’re honest, our sector’s decades long struggle with “member engagement” is self-inflicted. We have confused availability of information with usefulness and equated more features with better outcomes. The result? Bloated websites, busy apps, sprawling portals, toolkits upon toolkit, yet limited evidence that members are making better retirement decisions. Behavioural science and regulatory direction both point to a simpler truth: design around one primary outcome—a wage in retirement—and marshal every member interaction to improve either the projected income or our confidence in it.
Behavioural science is unequivocal: choice overload demotivates action. In the classic field experiments by Sheena Iyengar and Mark Lepper, customers offered 24 options were far less likely to act than those offered six; satisfaction also fell as options proliferated. Less, curated choice produced more decisions and better satisfaction.
Similarly, Hick’s Law shows decision time rises with the number of alternatives - an insight that has become foundational in interface design. When we present members with dense menus, overlapping calculators, and multi path journeys, we lengthen decision time and increase abandonment.
We see the effect in superannuation: young adults remain disengaged, seldom read fund materials and rarely take voluntary actions to improve outcomes. Even well intended “pension dashboards” often raise knowledge and self-efficacy without reliably converting to preparation or action, suggesting information alone is not the lever. Simplicity of action is.
BJ Fogg’s Behaviour Model is blunt: behaviour occurs when motivation, ability, and a prompt converge at the same moment. If anyone is missing, behaviour won’t happen. Crucially, ability means simplicity - reducing time, money, effort, brain cycles, social frictions, and non-routine steps. “Make it easy” is not a slogan; it’s a requirement.
Thaler and Sunstein’s nudge framework adds a practical corollary: choice architecture should default people into good outcomes and make the right action the easy action. Defaults (e.g., auto enrolment and escalation) work because they remove friction and reduce the cognitive burden on members.
Translated to our context, a fund’s design should:
These aren’t marketing preferences; they are empirically supported design imperatives.
The Retirement Income Covenant is explicit: the fundamental purpose of super is income in retirement, and trustees must formulate and continuously improve strategies that help members meet that need. Regulators have been clear that progress is uneven, and many funds remain compliance oriented rather than outcome oriented.
Industry pulse checks from ASIC/APRA reiterate the gap: few truly integrated retirement solutions that combine investments, lifetime income and drawdown planning; innovation is patchy. The call to action is to focus on outcomes, governance, tailored support, and measurement that members can actually use.
To escape the engagement trap, funds must change how they see themselves—and their members. Less as publishers or call‑centre hubs, more as simple, digital‑first outcome systems that deliver a wage in retirement.
1) Lead with three signals—only.
When a member logs in, they should see just three prominent tiles:
Everything else detailed account views, documents, calculators, sits behind a clear “View details” link for those who want it. This minimises cognitive load and aligns with Hick’s Law and choice overload evidence. (For supervisors and designers, IOPS/OECD good practices on projections provide guardrails for how income projections should be designed, presented, and governed, which complements the simplicity ethic without sacrificing rigor.)
2) One task at a time, always tied to income.
Tasks must be atomic and contextual: complete a beneficiary form, confirm contact details, read a bite‑size explainer, or entera guided advice flow—but always framed by “how this improves your income or our confidence in it.” Nudges and prompts should pull members back to the portal—not scatter them across emails, microsites and PDFs. This approach mirrors demonstrated effectiveness of targeted prompts in financial services and aligns with Fogg’s prompt taxonomy (facilitator/signal/spark).
3) Digital‑first service; call/email as escalations, not starting points.
Evidence from retirement tech shows digital apps increase voluntary contributions primarily by reducing hassle costs, not by adding more information. That’s the ability/simplicity lever at work. Funds should invest in frictionless portals and in‑journey guidance, transitioning members away from phone/email to self‑serve pathways where their income promise and next job are front and center.
4) Defaults and personalisation—used responsibly.
Nudge principles, applied ethically, can automate good behaviours (e.g.,default drawdown profiles, soft nudges near retirement to shift to tax‑free pension phase), while personalisation should illuminate—not overwhelm—choices. Recent industry examples show targeted prompts can progress passive members; regulators themselves envision personalised nudges at key decision points.
Simplification, properly done, does not remove member agency. It unburdens members from noisy choices so they can act on what matters. The OECD’s 2024 Pensions Outlook urges better communication and well-designed dashboards for asset backed pensions—precisely to help members navigate complex payout decisions and longevity risk. Simpler design is a precondition for comprehension and action.
And yes, nudges and defaults have limits; they’re not cure-alls and should be paired with robust advice and product design. But used responsibly, “Make it easy” remains the most reliable path from attention to action.
At Industry Fund Services (IFS), we license and deliver advice services that are purpose‑built for super funds and their members. Our approach integrates behavioural design with compliant advice frameworks so that guidance is simple, sequenced, and explicitly tied to a member’s retirement income projection. If your fund is ready to pivot from “more content” to more income confidence, we’d be delighted to help you operationalise this blueprint.
Bottom line:
Member engagement will remain elusive until we stop asking people to care about everything and start helping them do the next right thing. Lead with outcome and action; remove the noise; offer detail for those who need it. That is how we prepare members for a dignified retirement—and finally make engagement serve its rightful purpose.
By Adrian Gervasoni, Executive Manager Advice Services, Industry Fund Services (IFS). This publication is intended to provide general information only. It does not constitute financial, legal, or professional advice
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