cold comfort

For much of the past year or so, there has been a great deal of focus on the superannuation industry and its processing of insurance claims, largely owing to immense delays at some of the largest institutions.

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Stories have emerged of the likes of AustralianSuper and Cbus delaying paying claims to beneficiaries, sometimes by as much as four years. And it's not only a failure of their duty to members, but a failure of their systems.

In March, ASIC's claims handling report found 78% of delays were caused by processing issues within the trustees' control. Just 48% of claims were paid within 90 days. The most horrifying finding? A trustee that took over 500 days to pay a claim to a grieving widow and failed to respond to her financial hardship concerns.

In November 2024, ASIC launched proceedings against Cbus, having found that thousands of claimants waited more than 12 months for a benefit to be paid. It also alleged that Cbus was well aware of the scale of delays but did not report the issue to ASIC in a timely manner and, when it did, allegedly misled the regulator as to whether the issue was ongoing.

Also in November 2024, AustralianSuper paid $4.2 million in remediation to about 7000 beneficiaries whose claims took longer than the fund's internal target of four months from receiving the completed claim form. In March 2025, ASIC responded by suing the fund.

"In one case, despite having all the information required to pay the benefit, it took AustralianSuper 1140 days to make the payment; others took 438, 412 and 366 days," ASIC said.

And while delays in payment of death benefits has dominated the news cycle, there's another trend that's emerged in the insurance space that is also worthy of the spotlight - the rapid jump in mental health claims and how long they can take to be settled.

In calendar year 2024, Australian insurers paid out a total of $2.2 billion in mental health claims, according to modelling from the Council of Australian Life Insurers (CALI) using APRA data.