Payday Super: an opportunity for deeper member engagement
The new Payday Super laws are now less than a month away from coming into effect, on 1 July.
These changes are a genuinely meaningful reform that will bring about measurable improvements to the average retirement balances of Australians.
It’s also a huge opportunity for super funds to achieve a deep level of member engagement – an opportunity they could let slip without a well thought out content strategy to communicate the changes.
Let’s face it, an eDM and a website banner update is probably going to get missed by the majority of members.
But educational content backed by a considered digital strategy – one that maximises both reach and engagement – could see funds achieve real cut-through and meaningfully grow superannuation literacy among members.
Why the changes matter to members
From 1 July 2026, employers must pay employees super on payday, at the same time they pay their salaries or wages.
More frequent payments mean more frequent compounding, resulting in higher super balances at retirement for many Australians. The Super Members Council (SMC) estimates a worker on a median salary could have an extra $7,700 at retirement from the compounding benefits of more frequent payments alone.
The shift away from quarterly payments will also make it easier for members to stay on top of their super and connect it more directly to their pay. Quarterly payments created a timing disconnect that made it too easy for employers to fall behind, often assuming they’d catch up later, which contributed to a massive unpaid super problem. The SMC estimates Australians missed out on $24 billion in unpaid super between 2018 and 2023.
Members will also have a clearer way to track whether they’re actually being paid their super. Under the old system, many assumed super had been paid when they saw it on their payslip, when it generally wouldn’t have been yet. Under the new rules, if super hasn’t landed in a member’s account within seven business days of payday, they will know something is wrong and can follow up with their employer.
A chance to build something more valuable than a legislative update
This is where the real opportunity lies for fund marketing and comms teams. Funds have some genuinely positive news to deliver to their members – that they will likely have more money when they retire due to:
- more frequent payment of super leading to more compounding over time;
- less chance of missing out on super they’re owed as it will be much easier to keep track of super payments.
Funds can capitalise on this moment to provide educational content that illustrates the power of compounding and helps members understand what these changes mean for their actual retirement – and in doing so help to grow members’ overall super and financial literacy.
This is a chance to shift the relationship with members to be regarded as a trusted resource on financial concepts, rather than just somewhere their super goes and gets forgotten about. For younger members especially, that’s a huge opportunity.
How funds can create this engagement
As anyone in super knows, most members (especially younger ones) aren’t always excited to hear about the latest superannuation updates.
Emails from funds often end up unseen and unopened in the ‘Promotions’ folder.
To achieve a significant level of reach, a comprehensive, multi-channel digital strategy is usually required, which can encompass email, SEO, GEO (generative engine optimisation – increasingly important as LLM use has exploded), paid strategies, and more.
When it comes to the content itself, ‘rich’, interactive web content will always achieve better engagement than a wall of text.
In the case of communicating the benefits of Payday Super, written content could be supplemented with an interactive tool that lets users enter their age, income, super balance and pay frequency then shows them the actual difference in their projected retirement balances between quarterly and payday contributions. This would show them how the changes could benefit them, based on their actual personal situation.
Showing members the how the changes work in this way will have far more impact than just telling them.
Working with SGY
At SGY, we offer a unique blend of digital strategy expertise, superannuation sector knowledge, and the capability to build compliant, actuarially approved tools and super calculators.
We’d love to work with a fund to build a solution like the one described above.
Get in touch if you’d like to know more.