ASIC has said that further improvement is needed in how some superannuation funds and auditors assess and scrutinise the value of unlisted investments.
By way of background, in 2025 ASIC published Report 816 Accounting for your super: ASIC’s review into the financial reporting and audit of super funds (REP 816), which outlined its findings and called on superannuation trustees and auditors to strengthen financial reporting and audit practices.
In its second review into the financial report and audit of superannuation funds, ASIC found persistent concerns around valuations relating to registrable superannuation entity (RSE) financial reports and audits. According to Report 841 Accounting for your super: Super fund financial reporting and audit 2025–26 (REP 841), ASIC’s review of financial reports found:
- trustees often relied on external fund managers to provide fair value information for externally managed unlisted investments, which may limit their ability to review and challenge significant valuation assumptions and estimates
- some trustees did not adjust member liabilities in a timely manner following significant investment write-downs, and
- fair value hierarchy disclosures continue to only provide high-level descriptions and references to external pricing sources, with limited information about the valuation techniques, inputs and judgements used. This makes it difficult for members to understand how some fair values were determined and the uncertainty involved.
ASIC's review of audits found:
- for externally managed investments, some auditors did not adequately test the reliability of prices provided by external fund managers, or test the methods, assumptions and data used for the valuations, and
- for internally managed investments, some auditors did not obtain sufficient appropriate audit evidence for the valuations.
In 2026–27, ASIC will continue its RSE financial reporting and audit surveillance program and expand to include managed investment schemes. Where ASIC sees a significant breach of the Corporations Act 2001, it will consider taking appropriate regulatory and enforcement action, including issuing audit deficiency reports.
Source: ASIC, ASIC review highlights need for stronger scrutiny of super fund valuations [media release], 14 October 2026, accessed 14 October 2026.
