ASIC: A Cold Call About Your Super Is the Warning Sign

Australia's corporate watchdog has a blunt message for anyone who gets a surprise call about their superannuation: hang up. ASIC says so-called lead generators — the outfits that use social media ads and unsolicited phone calls to round up consumers and hand them to financial services firms — are steering people into high-risk switches that can wipe out retirement savings.

The scale of it shows up in ASIC's latest review. Across 15 Australian financial services licensees, more than 7,600 new clients — roughly a third of all new clients — arrived through lead generation services between January and June 2025. Those clients invested nearly $680 million, with more than 90 per cent of it superannuation money, while licensees deducted $9.8 million in upfront service fees and signed clients up to a further $4.5 million in annual ongoing charges.

ASIC commissioner Alan Kirkland said the pitch usually starts soft — a free super health check or a review — but the real goal is harvesting personal information to fuel a barrage of follow-up calls. He described a cold call about your super from someone you've never met as an immediate warning sign, especially when the caller pushes for a quick decision and a signature. Kirkland also pointed to social media as an accelerant, saying it has made it far easier for lead generators to cause harm.

The fallout is already brutal. ASIC flagged the collapses of Shield Master and First Guardian, where about 12,000 investors lost more than $1 billion — many of them after a lead generator introduced them to the advice that put them in those investments.

The review found unqualified lead generators using potentially misleading statements, fear-based claims and performance comparisons that weren't like-for-like to nudge clients into a super review or a switch. Five of the 15 licensees looked at had no controls in place to prohibit, or even identify, high-risk super switching by their representatives. ASIC said that's likely inconsistent with the legal duty to act in clients' best interests and puts both advisers and their licensees at risk of breaking the law.

Lead generation itself isn't against the law, Kirkland noted, but giving personal financial advice without the right licence or qualifications is — and so is a licensee allowing it to happen. ASIC says it has already issued consumer warnings, banned advisers, cancelled licences and taken court action, and will keep going. For anyone who genuinely wants financial guidance, its steer is to pick an appropriately qualified adviser yourself rather than wait for one to ring you, starting at the ASIC Moneysmart website.