Super fund mergers: the IT and member experience challenge you can’t ignore
Mergers are reshaping Australia’s superannuation landscape and funds more generally. Scale brings opportunities – greater efficiency, improved investment power, and the ability to deliver more value to members. Adding to this pressure is the government’s Your Future, Your Super performance test. By shining a spotlight on underperformers and compelling many to merge, the initiative has accelerated sector-wide consolidation.
But behind the headlines, the transition is rarely simple. For the teams delivering it, superannuation mergers expose hidden IT challenges and operational complexity that put member trust at risk.
When funds combine, members don’t see two businesses working through system migrations, IT consolidation or governance integration. They just expect the same seamless experience they’ve always had – or better. Meeting that expectation while navigating regulatory scrutiny, technology integration and cultural change is where the real challenge lies.
Yet even outside of mergers, IT complexity is a constant challenge for super funds. Legacy systems, siloed tools and limited visibility already strain operations – and consolidation simply magnifies the difficulty.
The hidden risks of superannuation mergers IT challenges
Mergers are about scale and efficiency, but the IT consolidation and process complexity behind the scenes can put member trust at risk. For members, a merger should be invisible. They want simple logins, clear communication, and uninterrupted access to services. Any disruption – failed transactions, downtime, or confusing new processes erodes trust and risks member attrition. That’s why IT and operations teams must put digital experience, system reliability, and service performance at the centre of every integration plan. Considerations for an integration must include:
Tool sprawl
Two funds rarely run on the same stack. Overlapping platforms, monitoring tools, and workflows create inefficiency and confusion. Even outside of mergers, visibility across complex organisations is a challenge – and when combined with a merger, the lack of visibility drives up costs rise and risks multiply. Unified observability helps simplify IT management and deliver clarity. Learn more about tool sprawl >
Data and integration risk
Every merger brings different data structures, privacy policies, and integration points. Migrating sensitive member data between systems without consistent controls introduces serious IT and compliance risk. Embedding effective governance is critical.
Service disruption
Even minor outages during transition – a member portal that loads slowly, a delayed transaction, a missing update – can erode trust quickly. In an industry built on confidence, those moments matter.
Escalating member expectations
Members are used to banking-style digital experiences: instant, intuitive, reliable. They won’t tolerate friction because “the fund is merging.” The pressure on IT teams to deliver without missing a beat is enormous.
The business risks if mergers go wrong
Member attrition:
Switching funds is easier than ever. If experience suffers, members won’t hesitate to move.
Reputational damage:
A disrupted merger can dominate headlines, undoing years of brand-building.
Regulatory penalties:
Compliance doesn’t pause during a merger. With CPS 230 and other obligations in play, boards must prove resilience throughout the transition.
A smarter path forward
It’s not only super funds facing structural shifts – health funds, are driven by regulatory pressures and market forces such as rising healthcare costs, shifting demographics, and evolving consumer expectations; while insurance companies, motivated by scale and digital evolution, are also deep in consolidation and transformation. Funds across sectors are racing to modernise IT, align systems, and preserve member trust.
The good news? Complexity doesn’t have to define your merger and transformation journey.
- Unified observability provides a single source of truth across systems, apps, and infrastructure. IT leaders can spot issues early and resolve them before they affect members. Learn More >
- AI-powered insights reduce blind spots and help teams make confident, data-driven decisions during system consolidation.
- Strong governance frameworks ensure regulatory requirements are continuously met, while embedding resilience into daily operations.
- Quality assurance and testing validate every migration and integration step – ensuring systems perform as expected before they reach members.
Proof in practice
When a leading super fund merged with another fund, Avocado worked alongside internal teams to provide end-to-end testing support across critical platforms. By combining test automation with domain expertise, we helped ensure new integrations didn’t break existing services.
The result:
- Zero major outages during cutover
- Faster defect resolution through automation
- Confidence across stakeholders that member-facing services would perform on day one.
Super funds aren’t alone in facing these IT pressures. Health funds like HBF have also confronted the challenge of delivering seamless member experiences while juggling regulation, legacy IT, and digital transformation.
In partnership with Avocado, HBF deployed Dynatrace to deliver real-time observability across a complex hybrid environment — providing clarity, strengthening resilience, and safeguarding member trust.
While a different sector, the challenges were strikingly similar:
- Members expected always-on, seamless experiences
- Regulators demand continuous resilience and compliance evidence
- IT teams juggled tool sprawl and legacy systems
By deploying Dynatrace observability, HBF achieved:
- Proactive issue detection before members were impacted
- Reduced mean time to resolution (MTTR) by up to 90%
- Stronger compliance and resilience
The lesson for super funds? Observability and a strong delivery partner are becoming mission-critical to protect trust, simplify complexity, and deliver seamless digital experiences.
These experiences highlight the value of approaching mergers and transformation holistically – from strategy and governance, through testing and automation, to modern observability with Dynatrace. By extending the same proactive assurance into a unified observability platform, funds can continuously monitor for risks, uncover hidden dependencies, and safeguard member trust long after cutover.
Final Thoughts
Fund mergers will continue – but whether they become a disruptive burden or a catalyst for transformation depends on how they’re managed. Success comes from balancing compliance, efficiency, and member-first outcomes. By prioritising visibility, resilience, and trust, and by investing in observability, security, and IT consolidation, funds can simplify operations, reduce risk, and emerge stronger from change.
Mergers are just one of the pressures shaping the sector. Our whitepaper, Exploring New Frontiers in Superannuation with Observability, unpacks the five strategic priorities funds must tackle — and how to overcome them.
[Download the Whitepaper]
Explore how leading funds are overcoming transformation challenges in our eBook: [Breaking Through the Complexity Wall].
[Download the Ebook]
