New AMP CEO Blair Vernon says that he will work hard to bolster its corporate super offering and gain back the market share it has lost to competitors like Australian Retirement Trust (ART) in recent years as part of a “relentless” focus on returning the master trust to positive inflow.

“Our go forward view is that corporate clients are critical. We don’t have what we call megafunds in terms of clients, but we have a lot of important corporate clients and we look to serve them every day,” Vernon told Investment Magazine in one of his first interviews since taking the reins of the 177-year-old wealth manager in March.

AMP once counted the likes of Coca-Cola, Australia Post and Woolworths among its corporate super clients, but lost those mandate – and others – in the years following the Hayne royal commission, with ART one of the biggest beneficiaries. But while Vernon said it would be important for AMP to be able to customise its services for different corporates, it was more focused on “the individual member offer”.

“It ultimately comes back to the core of your offer, which is that you’ve got to have great returns, you’ve got to have great insurance, you’ve got to have fantastic service. I think that’s one we particularly can differentiate on, because I think there’s been some quite variable service outcomes across the sector.”

Vernon said that there was a “plan and aspiration” to grow the master trust business despite the fact that it’s “had some challenges”, including ongoing outflows. 

“The reality is that there’s a whole bunch of clients we serve today and which we’re proud to serve… our solution works very well and we’re relentlessly focused on getting to positive cash flows. We’ve made some further improvements this quarter and we’ve been quite clear that we know there is plenty in front of us in 2026 in terms of that desire to get to positive flows.”

After a long period of divestment under his predecessor, Alexis George, that saw the piecemeal sale of AMP Capital and the licensee business, Vernon says there’s no “aspirations to change [the] portfolio” and no plans to sell the platform or bank.

“The reality is we’ve got tremendous prospects as an organisation,” Vernon says. “My focus is not M&A, my focus is organic growth of the business and addressing performance gaps where there might be. We want to work on the performance lift of the bank and there’s a range of ways to do that.”