On 30 September 2025, the Australian Securities and Investment Commission (ASIC) issued Report 816 Accounting for your super: ASIC’s review into the financial reporting and audit of super funds (REP 816).

REP 816 is the first in a series of three reports examining financial reporting and audit quality in 2024-25. It summarises the findings from ASIC’s review of financial reports from 60 registrable superannuation entities (RSEs) for the year ended 30 June 2024 and five RSE audit files. It will be of interest to preparers, reviewers and users of financial information such as auditors, audit committees, superannuation trustees, members, accounting firms and professional accounting bodies

Findings

Key findings in REP 816 include:

  • RSEs are taking different approaches when categorising unlisted investments, often with limited disclosure about their approach. As a result, ASIC considered that it was difficult for a user to compare investments between RSE financial reports, or to understand how much they could rely on those valuations.
  • Sponsorship and advertising expenses were not separately disclosed from other expenses in some RSE financial reports because RSEs took a narrow, quantitative approach to materiality.
  • Auditors are not doing enough to obtain sufficient audit evidence about investment valuations in the RSE financial reports. Given the size of RSEs, auditors adopted high levels of materiality which can result in less audit work being undertaken and variances not being investigated. Also some auditors did not adequately challenge the valuations provided by fund managers of managed investment schemes. ASIC issued comment forms to four auditors setting out its findings and will continue to work with them to resolve concerns.

Call to action

In REP 816 ASIC makes the following call to action:

  • Superannuation trustees should do more to ensure that valuations provided by external fund managers are reliable.
  • Superannuation trustees should ensure their fair value disclosures are sufficient to enable members to understand the nature of the investments and assess the reliability of valuations.
  • Superannuation trustees should consider disclosing more information about expenses in the RSEs’ financial reports where that information would be important to members.
  • RSE auditors should do more to obtain sufficient audit evidence about investment valuations.
  • RSE auditors should consider whether they should apply lower levels of materiality when conducting their RSE audits.

Future reports

ASIC will publish a report on auditor independence in early October, followed by its annual financial reporting and audit public report in late October.