"If a bat and ball cost $1.10 and the bat costs $1 more than the ball, then how much does the ball cost?"

I've just returned from the Association of Superannuation Funds Australia's (ASFA's) annual conference in Brisbane.

It was an exceptional conference with nearly 2,000 delegates with presentations from industry experts along with Dr Buzz Aldrin, Kevin Spacey and Stephen Fry.

The conference grappled with challenges from putting a man on the moon to colonising Mars.

The more I heard the more I realised that what we need is smarter members.

There are two trillion reasons why the Australian super system is amongst the world's best. Over the last 20 plus years the compulsory retirement savings environment has created a nest egg of over AUD $2 trillion to fund the retirement needs of Australians.

However, there is still one big unanswered question; is this enough? Recently, the compliance regime in Australia has allowed the use of retirement income projections on members' annual statements to give at least some indication of what a member could reasonably expect in retirement, assuming they die at 92.

Importantly, this is only a projection and is dependent on the member's' actual behaviour in accessing their super, investment markets and of course their individual longevity.

In many ways, just like here in the UK, the DC babies have been left with the razor blades. They have enough information to be dangerous to themselves.

This was brought home to me in one particular conference session when Dr Phil Harris, Honorary Fellow, Faculty of Business and Economics at the University of Melbourne, posed a simple mathematical question to the audience – an ; an audience full of industry experts:

"If a bat and ball cost $1.10 and the bat costs $1 more than the ball, then how much does the ball cost?"

Your answer?

I was dumbfounded when 90% of the audience put up their hand for the answer of 10 cents. If this audience couldn't do some basic arithmetic then what hope do members have in understanding their retirement income?

We have a moral responsibility to help members achieve their optimal retirement outcomes, to make complex decisions that have long-term consequences.

This requires more than compliance driven communication with a few tools and toys on a website. It's about developing decision guidance systems with easy, frictionless implementation.

Smarter members are the ones who get the right outcomes in retirement. In effect, what we do in building these decision pathways, makes members smarter.

By the way, the cost of the ball is 5 cents.

Peter Nicholas will be organising a Study Tour to the 2016 ASFA Conference on the Gold Coast in November 2016. If you are interested in participating please contact him directly at peter.nicholas@ahc.com

Written by Peter Nicholas, Managing Director, AHC