Aware Super – Retirement Manager: Reimagining Retirement Advice at Scale

Retirement Manager was designed around a fundamental member need: understanding what their financial position will look like in retirement and how it will shape their lifestyle. Many members struggle to transition from accumulation to retirement, with the process poorly understood and advice not always easy to access. This creates uncertainty about how much members can safely withdraw in retirement, leading many to default to the government‑mandated minimum drawdown and limiting overall quality of life. The challenge was to design a experience that delivered personalised retirement advice at scale within a highly regulated environment, seamlessly blending digital guidance with human support.

Retirement Manager was developed using Aware's Human-Centred Design approach to enterprise delivery, the 4Ds, enabling the team to challenge the conventions of traditional retirement calculators built on complex graphs and projections. Through continuous discovery, iteration and cross-functional collaboration, the team addressed member needs for clarity, confidence and reassurance within a highly regulated environment.The solution moved beyond traditional legal and product constraints, replacing cognitive overload with simple visuals, smart defaults and outcome-focused digital advice. Seamless access to human support at critical moments has resulted in a compliant, scalable advice experience that turns complex retirement decisions into confident action.

Through intuitive design, Retirement Manager is transforming decision-making at scale, supporting the 25,000 members retiring each year and the more than 100,000 already in retirement. Available at no additional cost, it blends digital advice with seamless human support, broadening access to financial advice for all membersThe results speak for themselves: 96% of members using Retirement Manager choose to draw more than the mandated minimum, compared to a 54% baseline, unlocking an average of $18,000 in additional annual income. Retirement Manager has also been recognised by leading third-party rating agencies for its innovation and member-centred design.

Retirement Manager is purposefully designed to build confidence leading up to and during one of life's most important stages with features that deliver clarity, flexibility and reassurance, all grounded in member research and testing.The experience is mobile-first, reflecting that 40% of members engage via mobile, ensuring critical retirement decisions are accessible in the channels members prefer.Two distinct pathways, Essentials and Advanced, acknowledge the diversity of retirees in terms of confidence and financial complexity. Essentials provides a fast, low-friction experience using a member's existing balance, while Advanced supports deeper scenario exploration, including contributions of partners, external assets and the Age Pension.Income planning is reframed around three human-centred goals, Maximised, Like Today and Personal, making abstract trade-offs tangible and relatable. At the heart of the experience is the Retirement Income Confidence Score, which translates longevity and market-risk modelling into a clear, visual signal members can easily understand and act on.Smart defaults, progressive disclosure and timely nudges also help reduce effort in decision making while preserving member choice - guiding people toward informed, confident decisions about their retirement.