After years away from the nation’s television sets – and its billboards and train platforms – Insignia-owned MLC has launched a new advertising campaign that it hopes will position it as a leader in retirement. Starring actor Matt Berry, the ads prominently feature the phrase “We don’t care about the future” in a move that Renee Howie, chief customer officer at MLC, says was aimed at overcoming clichés about retirement.

“We wanted to wake people up to thinking about their future today, and we wanted that done in a way that was not scary, that was not ominous, but that actually was fun,” Howie tells Investment Magazine.

But the campaign would have done little to change MLC’s position in the market if it hadn’t also thrown open its master trust to new members – which it did last Sunday, with the launch of a new online application that Howie says can be filled out in under 10 minutes. That’s a big step up from a process that has, in the past, typically required a financial adviser – or, as Insignia chief executive Scott Hartley said in August, “resilience and persistence” on the part of an individual member.

“Historically, it’s been quite hard to join us,” Howie says. “There’s about 1.5 million super switches a year, so the first thing we did was ensure we had a great front door.”

Howie says that MLC is also undertaking a slew of uplift work across member services and, over the next two years, putting in place new technology to help it communicate better with members. Hartley has also previously described the current approach there as “circa 2000”, with members divided into cohorts to receive campaign messaging via email.

“This is the beginning of a very big project for us to ensure that we offer the best member experience in the market,” Howie says. “For us, it’s about ensuring that we are a competitive, compelling and exceptional experience for retail members who wish to switch and join.”

While Howie says MLC “isn’t really focused on what [its] competitors are doing”, she concedes that the advertising campaign and the new ease with which members can join will position the fund differently in the market. It will probably be cause for some consternation from the profit-to-member segment, which, already facing stiff competition from platform businesses, are spending more and more money on advertising to attract and retain new members, as well as working hard to broaden their relationships with external financial advisers.

It also shows the advantage some retail funds still enjoy over their profit-to-member competitors – brand recognition. MLC has been out of the market for more than five years, but still enjoys significant awareness among consumers (such that, even though the combined business is called Insignia, and its history is weighted more heavily towards IOOF, MLC has been made the go-forward brand for pretty much everything except advice firms Shadforth and Bridges).

So there is reason to take seriously Howie’s statement that “MLC is absolutely back”. And with significant investment into areas where profit-to-member funds have lagged, like administration and member servicing, it probably stands a good chance. But it remains to be seen whether it can take on megafunds like AustralianSuper and ART, which have leveraged the first-mover advantage of low-cost, high-performing products, as well as the reputational benefits of the Hayne royal commission, to establish themselves as the pre-eminent force in Australia’s superannuation system.