Both APRA and ASIC have told super funds they need to adopt a greater risk appetite and be more innovative in how they fulfil their obligations under the Retirement Income Covenant.

In this episode of the Pension Policy Podcast, MLC’s director of customer innovation Ashton Jones tells Retirement Magazine editor Simon Hoyle that his definition of “innovation” is “ideas implemented”, and that there’s plenty of scope for funds to innovate even under existing regulations.

Jones says that managed accounts only received widespread financial adviser acceptance once they were freely available on-platform, and the same is likely to be true of innovative retirement income streams.

He says innovation is also how the existing great features of the industry are built upon to push the whole industry forward, and the IRIS products starting to come to market leverage the best parts of the platforms industry: everything in one place, client reporting in that gives advisers a way to have a single conversation with clients, and which allows them to see transparently what’s going on under the hood.