Sunsuper has pledged to create niche cohort strategies alongside its initial lifestyle MySuper product, which has gone live with 900,000 members and $16 billion of assets.

Members most affected by the launch on October 4 are those aged over 55, who hold over 90,000 accounts which have begun the transition into less risky assets than younger members.

The process, which is designed to gradually reduce equity investments for members in the 10 years preceding retirement, was devised in response to member feedback.

Andrew Nicholson, general manager of product at Sunsuper, says this is only the first step in its MySuper evolution.

“The industry has a fair bit of work to do to understand, other than the standard glide path, how best to derisk to retirement. We are going on a journey, we are 80 per cent of the way there, but we need to become more sophisticated. The other 20 per cent of the journey is looking for specific cohorts, identifying them and speaking to members and understanding what their needs are, then delivering a customised or tailored strategy.”

Nicholson said that Sunsuper’s self-run administration platform gave it greater flexibility in tailoring member segments based on age, gender and salary levels.

The path to segmentation has already been taken by QSuper, which has derisked investments for members over the age of 58 with balances of $300,000 and is moving to change the default investments of other members with a range of cohort strategies, into which members are moved by a process of negative consent.