Insights
Engineering the next era of superannuation
- Date 14 May 2026
- Filed under Insights
A C-suite perspective on the forces reshaping Australian Wealth & Super
Helping Australia’s superannuation and wealth leaders modernise platforms, uplift member experience and meet a new standard for operational resilience.
A new reality for superannuation
The Australian superannuation system now holds $4.5 trillion in member retirement savings (Dec 2025, APRA) and is approaching $5 trillion within the decade. With that scale has come a harder operating reality.
A tightening regulatory perimeter. A generational wave of retiring members. An intensifying contest for member experience. And a technology estate that (across most funds) was built for a smaller, simpler industry.
CPS 230, successor fund transfer economics, retirement income covenant expectations, cyber threat pressure, AI-era member expectations, and Payday Super are compounding at once. The pressure is no longer episodic. It is the steady state.
NRI was built for exactly this moment. We combine the scale and sixty-year heritage of a Tokyo-listed parent with the agility, local presence and superannuation domain depth our clients need.
“The funds that will lead the next decade will be the ones that stop treating modernisation as a program and start treating it as a permanent capability.”
Six forces reshaping Australian Wealth & Super
The most significant structural shift since the introduction of compulsory super — happening simultaneously.
Operational resilience under CPS 230
Prudential Standard CPS 230 has reset the bar for how funds identify, test and demonstrate resilience across critical operations, third parties and disruption scenarios.
Most funds have the policy framework in place. Few have the end-to-end operational evidence, control automation and supplier assurance needed to stand behind it at scale.
Risk if not addressed: Inability to evidence resilience under regulatory scrutiny, leading to remediation costs, supervisory action and reputational impact.
A retirement income economy
The Retirement Income Covenant and the demographic shift of Baby Boomers into decumulation are rewriting product, advice and service models across the industry.
Funds are being asked to deliver guidance-at-scale, personalised projections and retirement-grade service on platforms originally designed for accumulation members.
Risk if not addressed: Failure to meet evolving member needs in decumulation, resulting in reduced engagement, loss of trust and outflows at the point of retirement
Consolidation and SFTs
APRA’s performance test and sustainability expectations continue to drive successor fund transfers. The next wave of mergers will be larger, more complex and less forgiving.
Data migration, member choice architecture, insurance equivalency and post-merger platform convergence are the disciplines that determine whether value is created or eroded.
Risk if not addressed: Value erosion through poor execution, including member disruption, integration delays and prolonged cost inefficiencies.
Cyber and trust
Super funds are now Tier 1 targets. Recent incidents across the industry have exposed both the direct loss exposure and the reputational premium the best-prepared funds will command.
Boards are asking harder questions: not just whether controls exist, but whether they have been tested under realistic scenarios and whether response muscle memory is in place.
Risk if not addressed: Increased exposure to cyber incidents, with direct financial loss and long-term damage to member trust and brand
The member experience gap
Members now benchmark their super fund against their banking app, not their last super statement. Trust is earned or lost in the app, the call centre and the claims journey.
Underneath this sits a technology estate that is often fragmented between administrator, fund, advice and data platforms making consistent, personalised experiences hard to deliver.
Risk if not addressed: Rising cost-to-serve and declining member satisfaction, driving disengagement and increased churn.
AI readiness, responsibly
Generative AI is already transforming contact centres, advice journeys, claims triage and internal productivity. The question is no longer whether, but how fast and how safely.
Funds need AI strategies that balance member uplift with model risk, explainability, data lineage and regulatory expectations — not bolt-on pilots that stall at production.
Risk if not addressed: Missed efficiency gains and competitive disadvantage, alongside heightened governance, compliance and model risk exposure.
Four questions worth asking your C-Suite
Most super fund leadership teams already know the shape of what’s coming. What’s harder — and what this brochure is designed to open — is the conversation about sequencing. Which of the forces on the right matters most for your fund, in your next board cycle.
We’ve built this practice for exactly that conversation. Not to pitch a framework, but to bring a practitioner’s point of view to the decisions a super fund C-suite actually has to make in the next ninety days.
1
Can we actually evidence CPS 230 resilience — not just document it?
What would a realistic disruption scenario show about our critical operations, third parties and recovery posture today?
2
Is our technology estate retirement-ready or accumulation-built?
Where are the gaps between our stated retirement vision and what our platforms, data and servicing model can actually deliver at scale?
3
Where should AI compound — and where is it noise?
Which parts of our member, advice and claims operation will AI measurably improve in twelve months — and which pilots should we stop?
4
Post-merger: have we actually captured the synergy case?
Is the combined operating model simpler — or just larger? Where has latent friction survived the integration?
Why our expertise meets the moment
Backed by Japan, built for Australian financial services.
Nomura Research Institute (NRI) is one of Japan’s largest consulting and technology groups. Founded in 1965 and listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange, NRI builds, operates, and assures some of the most critical financial infrastructure in Japan — from exchange trading systems and fund administration platforms to regulatory reporting infrastructure for leading banks and insurers.
In Australia, we operate as a local consulting and technology partner of 3,500+ practitioners, delivering end-to-end transformation for financial services, government, and enterprise clients.
For Australian superannuation funds, we bring something rare: operating scale in financial market infrastructure, combined with local practitioners who understand the APRA regulatory landscape and the commercial realities of mid-sized funds.
“Our value proposition is unlike other consultancies. We are practitioners from an organisation that builds and runs the systems our clients depend on.”
What we bring
SCALE
A global financial services systems integrator
16,000 people. 60+ years. Critical financial infrastructure across Japan and globally, from exchange systems to fund administration.
LOCAL DEPTH
Practitioners who know your industry
3,500+ Australian practitioners. Senior leaders with first-hand super, wealth and APRA experience — not generalists.
ECOSYSTEM
The NRI FinIT Group
Adjacent businesses across stockbroking (AUSIEX), fixed income (FIIG) and investment operations (Cutter).
Why NRI
A different kind of partner
Most consulting firms approach superannuation as a vertical within financial services. We treat it as an industry in its own right.
01
Superannuation domain depth
Our senior leaders have operated inside super funds and administrators. We speak the language of trustees, CIOs, admin platforms, custody, insurance and member services — not generic FS.
02
Backed by the NRI Group’s expertise
A Tokyo-listed consultancy and systems integrator with sixty years of financial services heritage. Japanese precision. Global assets. Local delivery.
03
FinIT ecosystem advantage
Uniquely in Australia, NRI owns adjacent FS businesses — AUSIEX in stockbroking, FIIG in fixed income, Cutter Associates in investment operations — giving insider access to the full super value chain.
04
Outcome-accountable delivery
Our engagement model is built around measurable outcomes, not bodies on site. AI accelerators, quality engineering (Planit) and managed services are embedded, not sold separately.
How we engage
An end-to-end framework
NRI’s A-BAM model integrates strategy, execution and managed services into a single continuous partnership — with AI accelerators woven through every stage.
A
ADVISE
Strategy, architecture, planning, change, design.
IT advisory · Data & AI strategy · Transformation management · Human-centred design · Digital change.
B
BUILD
Implementation, integration, migration.
Enterprise applications across Salesforce, Oracle, SAP, Microsoft · Data platforms · Cloud · Identity · Digital experience.
A
ASSURE
Quality engineering, testing, performance, security.
Backed by Planit, our 1,700-strong QE practice · AI-powered QE · Security testing · Program delivery assurance.
M
MANAGE
Application, infrastructure, cloud, cyber.
24×7 managed services across applications · Multi-cloud · Networks · Service desk · Monitoring and AIOps.
AI accelerator built in
Amplify
Our enterprise AI delivery platform Amplify embeds AI across the software development lifecycle — strategy to build to run — delivered by 1,000+ certified AI engineers inside NRI.
- 80% reduction in test script generation effort
- 25% more valid edge cases in test coverage
- 90% reduction in test data generation time
A unique vantage point
The NRI ecosystem
Uniquely in Australia, NRI sits within a broader financial services ecosystem — the NRI FinIT Group.
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Australia’s leading wholesale broker and trading platform for advisers and institutional clients. |
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Specialist fixed income house, expanding retirement income product relevance for funds. |
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Global investment operations research and advisory — uniquely placed to advise super fund CIO offices. |
Integrated capability, delivered as one
NRI’s Australian footprint is broader than a single consulting entity. Through acquisition and integration, we operate a family of specialist firms that combine under one delivery model. For super funds, this means consolidated accountability and access to genuinely specialised depth in the areas that matter most.
Planit
Quality engineering and assurance. 1,700+ QE experts. AI-driven testing through Amplify.
Velrada
Microsoft Cloud Solution Partner with deep expertise across the full Microsoft stack.
M&T Resources
Digital and technology recruitment — contract, permanent, executive, and resource augmentation.
Group 10 Consulting
ICT asset acquisition, management and optimisation — specialist advisory on technology portfolios.
Platform expertise
We understand the platforms that run Australian superannuation — Salesforce, Oracle, Microsoft, and a long tail of specialist admin and investment systems. What differentiates us is not claimed breadth, but depth in the specific configurations that matter to funds at scale.
Marketing Cloud · ERP · Finance & HR transformation · Financial Services Cloud
- Platform modernisation and legacy refactoring
- Member journey orchestration across channels
- Finance and operations cloud migration
- Data architecture, lineage and API governance
- Cloud modernisation and Azure migration — via Velrada, an NRI company
- AI-assisted knowledge and member service
- Dynamics and Power Platform automation
- Identity, access and security
