Super Alert – 16 October 2026: APRA Annual Report, ASIC surveillance report following review of RSE financial reports and audits

Welcome to the weekly KHQ Super Alert. This week ASIC released a report into the financial reports and audits of super funds for the 2025-26 period, together with a speech that outlined ASIC’s recent work in relation to financial reporting and audits. Meanwhile, APRA published its 2025-26 Annual Report which discussed APRA’s activities over the period in relation to super funds and other financial institutions.

ASIC – Surveillance report released following review of RSE financial reports and audits

On 14 October 2026, ASIC released REP 841 Accounting for your super: Super fund financial reporting and audit 2025-26, a report summarising the regulator’s findings from its surveillance of financial reports and audits of RSEs during the 2025-26 period. The report highlights areas where RSEs and auditors can improve the quality of their financial reporting and audits.

ASIC’s findings included:

• ‘trustees often relied on external fund managers to provide fair value information for externally managed unlisted investments, which may limit their ability to review and challenge significant valuation assumptions and estimates’;
• ‘some trustees did not adjust member liabilities in a timely manner following significant investment write-downs’;
• ‘fair value hierarchy disclosures continue to only provide high-level descriptions and references to external pricing sources, with limited information about the valuation techniques, inputs and judgements used. This makes it difficult for members to understand how some fair values were determined and the uncertainty involved’;
• ‘for externally managed investments, some auditors did not adequately test the reliability of prices provided by external fund managers, or test the methods, assumptions and data used for the valuations’; and
• ‘for internally managed investments, some auditors did not obtain sufficient appropriate audit evidence for the valuations.’

In 2026–27, ASIC will expand its RSE financial reporting and audit surveillance program to include managed investment schemes.

Click here for details.

APRA – 2025-26 Annual Report published

On 14 October 2026, APRA released its 2025-26 Annual Report, as required under the Public Governance, Performance and Accountability Act 2013. ‘The report sets out how APRA has worked to maintain the safety and stability of APRA-regulated financial institutions for the benefit of the Australian community.’ The report comes as the total assets under APRA’s supervision surpassed $10 trillion for the first time, of which approximately $3 trillion was held in superannuation across 23 million APRA-regulated member accounts.

During the year, APRA noted that its superannuation-related actions included:

• publishing the results of the 2025 Performance Test, under which 563 superannuation products were assessed, accounting for 62 per cent of APRA-regulated superannuation member benefits;
• working with ASIC to reduce reporting requirements under the Financial Accountability Regime for financial entities such as superannuation funds;
• publishing its ‘findings from a thematic review covering trustees responsible for 95 per cent of superannuation platform assets’;
• ‘imposing licence conditions on six superannuation trustees to address prudential concerns relating to their investment governance, expenditure management and risk management’; and
• ‘accepting a court-enforceable undertaking from Netwealth Superannuation Services Pty Limited to address material weaknesses in its investment governance framework and practices’.

Click here and here for details.

ASIC – Speech concerning transparency and the future of financial reporting published

On 14 October 2026, ASIC published a speech by Chair Sarah Court, which discussed ASIC’s recent work and views on financial reporting and audit standards across Australia’s financial system. Key points from the Chair’s speech included:

• ASIC views trusted, high-quality financial reporting as fundamental to market integrity and the efficient allocation of capital;
• ‘ASIC is focused on maintaining high standards of accountability and transparency while contributing to efforts to ensure Australia’s reporting framework remains effective, proportionate and supportive of productivity’; and
• ‘regardless of the evolving regulatory environment, one requirement does not change: financial information must be accurate, accessible and reliable.’

In her speech, the Chair announced that ASIC will soon publish two reports:

• the first, documenting the findings of its annual financial reporting and audit review of companies; and
• the second, setting out the findings of its review of financial reporting and audit in the superannuation sector, as detailed previously in this Super Alert.

Click here for details.

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