Best of the Best 2026: How we picked the best financial products
The Best of the Best 2026 bumper issue of Money magazine is out now! Here's how we chose the winners.
Examining a marketplace that offers consumers a range of financial products is an important role for any independent organisation, including Rainmaker, publisher of Money.
Rainmaker has again applied its quantitative expertise to analyse market data and examine hundreds of product providers and thousands of products, choices and options over a period of up to 10 years.
Reviewing each market segment requires a different approach and the sections below describe how it was done.
What makes a super fund the best in 2026?
Superannuation assets now exceed $4.3 trillion, and member balances represent a sizable component of aggregate household wealth.
The Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA) data at June 2025 shows more than half of superannuation industry assets are invested by industry super funds (36%) ('profit to members' funds) and retail super funds (20%) ('for profit' or 'commercial super funds'), with the remainder of the sector's assets being self-managed super funds (SMSFs) at 24%, public sector funds (14%), corporate super funds (1%) and other statutory or public exempt schemes (5%).
Moneys' superannuation awards span best performing products, the best value, the most innovative as well as those that deliver the best value insurance. To be eligible for the Money awards, a superannuation product must be a public offer and be AAA-rated by Rainmaker.
Identifying Australia's top performing superannuation products involved Rainmaker reviewing MySuper products (default 'flagship' products), and asset classes that include growth, balanced, moderate (capital stable), shares, property, bonds, cash and ESG investment options.
MySuper products are manufactured by providers in two dimensions; diversified single-strategy products that spread super balances across major asset classes (Australian and international equities, fixed interest, property etc.) and lifecycle products that invest across asset classes in differing proportions, depending on a member's age (younger cohorts having higher exposures to shares and property, and lower allocations to fixed interest and cash, while older age groups are more defensively positioned).
Rainmaker identifies Australia's best performing superannuation products, MySuper single strategy products, and investment choices by assessing how they performed over the past 10, five and three years, as well as what they achieved over the past 12 months to June 30, 2025. Rainmaker's proprietary composite scoring method enables us to reward consistency and to identify those superannuation products that perform best over different market cycles.
MySuper lifecycle products were assessed in a similar way, with the exception being that we identified those products that had the best overall rankings across options designed for fund members in their teens, 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s and 60s. We awarded the best lifecycle product as the one that ranked the highest right across the age cohorts.
The best-value super product for young people is evaluated as the best product when we look at the returns that people in their 20s would have received considering the fees that hit their lower account balance.
Identifying the lowest cost products was undertaken by assessing the investment, administration and member fees that a fund member would be charged if they had both $10,000, $50,000 and $100,000 as their superannuation account balance. It should also be noted that zero-fee indexed options are not free because members still pay fees to be invested in the fund.
Fees for retirement products, also known as pension products, were assessed by reviewing fees they would pay if they had assets of $100,000, $500,000 and $1,000,000 in their account. So Rainmaker ranked the funds given multiple account balances for both super and pension products.
How do you find the best managed funds and ETFs?
Rainmaker's managed funds and exchange traded funds awards consider a variety of factors to determine winners and finalists.
While overall medium term (five-year) performance is important, it is only one factor among many. Our quantitative process also considers investment risk, in the form of volatility (standard deviation) and downside volatility (the variability of negative returns generated by the fund). Accounting for a fund's risk is critically important, because it would be naive to simply award funds with the highest returns if they had also subjected investors to the highest risks.
To further improve our performance insights, we also examined performance persistence (or consistency) relative to the peer group using annual performance in each of the preceding five years.
In other words, performance persistence is more interested in rewarding investment providers that have a time series of annual returns that are competitive against the peer group, rather than just a higher average return for the period.
Finally, in some asset classes such as shares, an adjustment is made depending on whether a product has shown a persistent bias to style factors, such as value, growth and small-caps.
The best managers are chosen for having the most products shortlisted in most categories. The products are ranked in each category, and this ranking determines the number of points given to each product. The manager with the most points determines the winner.
How do you narrow down the best home loans and savings in 2026?
Australia has a diverse market of authorised deposit-taking institutions (ADIs) and other financial institutions. We have categorised the financial institutions into: bank, customer-owned bank, boutique bank, non-bank and non-bank fintech (see page 88 for a breakdown of each subsector). The information used to assess the products was sourced on July 31, 2025.
Home loan mortgages were assessed using the comparison rate for variable owner-occupied principal and interest mortgage with an 80% loan-to-value ratio (LVR).
Term deposits (TDs) were assessed according to the highest interest rates in two categories: short-term TDs that paid the best rates at maturity for terms shorter than 12 months and long-term that paid the best annual interest rates for terms longer than one year.
Credit cards were ranked by the lowest cost of $5000 revolving credit over the preceding two years, taking into account introductory terms and rates.
Loans were assessed by the comparison rate for a $30,000 loan over the past five years.
Savings accounts were ranked by weighted nominal interest rates that were applicable to a range of balances, after considering any applicable monthly or annual fees. Introductory terms and rates were also factored into the quantitative process.
What makes award-winning insurance?
Insurance premiums have been one of the major consumer categories to have seen costs rise substantially over recent years. Insurance is one of the most important financial products for consumers, but it's hard to compare providers because premium costs can vary according to the value of what you want to insure, and how risky the insurer assesses the situation to be.
Home and contents insurance is determined by where you live, type of building (house versus apartment), home security system and whether someone is at home during daytime hours. Weather events and natural disasters can severely add to your premium costs.
What did we consider to find the best online share brokers?
Rainmaker reviewed not only which broker charges the lowest fees, but which also had the best and broadest features, the most features, access to the most investment types, as well as which broker offered the widest range of account types.
Why is it called Best of the Best 2026?
While the awards are announced in late 2025, these are the best products and services for you to take advantage of in the coming year. Hence, Best of the Best 2026!
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