AustralianSuper to compensate beneficiaries for death benefit claim delays

2 December 2024

As publicly announced, AustralianSuper has started a program to compensate beneficiaries whose death benefit claims took longer than the Fund’s internal target handling time of four months from the date when the claim form was received.

Affected beneficiaries will be sent letters from early December detailing how much money they will be entitled to as part of the process. A cohort of about 7000 people will receive the letters and the estimated amount of remediation will be about $4.2 million. The fund is reviewing and finalising investigations into a smaller cohort of beneficiaries who may also be affected.

‘AustralianSuper is committed to putting members first but we don’t always get everything right and we are sorry for that. When we become aware of an issue our priority is to resolve it and provide members and their beneficiaries with the service they expect and deserve,’ Chief Member Officer Rose Kerlin said.

‘Over the coming months, we’ll be contacting members’ beneficiaries who have been impacted by previous delays and compensating them to put them back in the position they would have been in, or as close as possible to that position, had the delays in processing the death benefit claim not occurred. This is being done regardless of why the delay occurred.’

Ms Kerlin said an increase in members, an increase in elderly members and an increase in the death of members during the COVID period contributed to a significant growth in death claims, affecting assessment and payment timeframes.

‘Over the past 18 months, AustralianSuper has undertaken a thorough review of the Fund’s processes and implemented a number of important changes,’ Ms Kerlin said.

'We initially doubled the size of the team supporting members’ beneficiaries through the claims process at our service provider so we could more efficiently manage these claims and pay members’ beneficiaries as quickly as possible.

‘While this made important improvements, we didn’t feel it went far enough. After sustained attempts to improve performance with our service provider, we formed the view that our old arrangements would not be able to deliver the service with the speed, care and empathy members expect.

‘We streamlined our approach to dealing with death claims and in December 2023 we announced a new Bereavement Centre, which opened in April with an internal team of 75 fund employees based in AustralianSuper offices dedicated to helping and supporting members’ loved ones with death claims. All death claims are now managed internally, and all beneficiaries are assigned a case manager as a single point of contact for the entire process.

'With the changes the Fund has made we have seen a 53% reduction in long standing claims since August 2023.’

In addition to the new internal Bereavement Centre, AustralianSuper will shortly introduce non-lapsing binding nominations. Members will have a choice of a preferred (non-binding) nomination, a three-year lapsing binding nomination, or a non-lapsing binding nomination. Having a valid binding death nomination form allows members to clearly indicate who their beneficiaries are, potentially removing complexity from the claim process and allowing claims to be paid out faster.

The Fund expects the death claims remediation program will be substantially completed by the middle of next year and a dedicated team has been established to support affected beneficiaries.

For media enquiries, please contact

Sam Prenesti
M: +61 432 796 888
E: sprenesti@australiansuper.com