MUFG Retirement Solutions is committed to building advice capability at scale, and the firm is confident there’s enough market demand for both the new class of adviser (NCA) and holistic advisers to thrive side by side.
Minister for Financial Services Daniel Mulino announced in August that a second tier of adviser, which APRA-regulated super funds and insurers will be able to employ for simple advice needs, remains a policy priority for the government.
MUFG Retirement Solutions ANZ chief executive Frank Lombardo tells CoreData Research the industry will be big enough for NCAs and holistic advisers to work together.
“I firmly believe through better engagement with advice and supporting members through help, education and guidance and the simpler forms of advice, it will ultimately help them build their understanding of the value of advice,” Lombardo says.
“That will grow the volume of demand to human advisers. I’m 100 per cent confident that is what is going to emerge.”
MUFG Pension & Market Services was born out of the acquisition of the formerly ASX-listed Link Group by Japan-based Mitsubishi UFJ Trust & Banking Corporation in 2024.
MUFG Retirement Solutions, which focuses on delivering super fund administration as well as advice/guidance platform Retire360, is one of two divisions of MUFG Pension & Market Services.
Lombardo was appointed Australia and New Zealand CEO for MUFG Retirement Solutions in February 2025, after a decade as an executive at Insignia Financial.
In Australia, MUFG Retirement Solutions partners with 19 super funds, supporting around $930 billion in retirement savings at 31 July 2026. Its client funds represent approximately 20 per cent of Australia’s $4.8 trillion superannuation market and serve 9.8 million members. The comments follow MUFG Pension & Market Services’ proposed acquisition of GROW Inc, announced in late August and still subject to regulatory, shareholder and court approval.
GROW Inc has faced serious financial strain, with reports of near-insolvency (around $45 million in liabilities against $24 million in assets) and auditors flagging doubt over its going-concern status, following outages affecting HESTA members. Former investors include HESTA, AirTree Ventures, Five V Capital, Citi and Hitachi Ventures.
Lombardo says the deal reflects MUFG’s commitment to the Australian market.
“The superannuation sector is increasingly looking for partners who can support a diverse range of strategies, products and member experiences, while continuing to meet rising expectations around service, data, governance and operational performance,” he says.
Super funds are gearing up their advice offerings to address advice gaps with an advice continuum that deals with everything from general inquiries to full comprehensive advice, but Lombardo says any model must appear seamless from a member perspective.
An advice continuum is a spectrum of advice services – from general guidance and digital tools through scaled or limited advice to full comprehensive advice – that a member can move through as their situation and advice needs become more complex.
Lombardo says that while the system can help triage members based on need, it shouldn’t force members to start over each time they move to a different stage of the process.
“We believe that continuum has to be seamless from a member perspective,” he says, with members moving through it “at different points in their savings journey” and driving the process themselves based on the questions that they ask.
MUFG Retirement Solutions sees its role in filling the advice gap as bringing tools to market that support that seamless transition through the continuum and meet members’ expectations.
Where a human adviser is required, Lombardo wants the transition to be invisible to the member.
“The member moves seamlessly through to a human to support them, but equally, the data that’s been captured moves through seamlessly,” he says, rather than the member having to repeat their situation from scratch.
MUFG Retirement Solutions hopes it can continue to help serve the biggest need in financial services – the growing need to deliver retirement solutions to super fund members.
Lombardo says the shift from accumulation to pension phase is already well underway, with 98 members an hour retiring according to a whitepaper the group has produced.
“There’s plenty of data out there on that shift, and that’s already started to happen,” Lombardo says.
For funds, he says, that shift is less a retirement problem than an engagement one.
“Member engagement and the role that advice plays are really important,” Lombardo says.
“Having a really strong advice solution will help to further mature that engagement and help the funds build trust with them in an advice sense.”
Lombardo pushes back on the idea that advice is only relevant to members nearing retirement.
“I don’t think advice is limited to the older cohort; the younger cohort will benefit as much from advice as older cohorts,” he says, adding funds should be building trust in advice as early as possible.
On the advice gap itself, Lombardo points to workforce numbers as the core constraint.
“We’ve got a human capacity issue, which is well documented – there’s a supply-demand issue there, and that’s really driving up the price of advice,” he says.
“Advice needs to reach more Australians. Advice needs to be high-quality and affordable and it’s not that today.
“I don’t think any one fund or organisation is going to solve the human capacity challenge… it’s going to require all of us to act together.”