Australia's best-value super fund for young people
Essential Super has been named Money's Best-Value Super Fund for Young People as part of the 2026 Best of the Best awards.
- Find out how we chose the winners
- Order your copy of the bumper awards issue
- Check out more from Best of the Best 2026
Playwright George Bernard Shaw may have quipped that youth is wasted on the young, but superannuation certainly isn't.
A lifetime in the workforce can see today's 20-somethings amass a considerable nest egg by the time they retire, and when it comes to value for young people, Essential Super tops the leaderboard.
While Essential Super is available through the Commonwealth Bank, Vanessa Rowe, general manager of guidance and investing, explains, "Essential Super is provided by Colonial First State, a respected superannuation and investments business that has been trusted by millions of Australians to manage and grow their super over the past 30 years.
"The Essential Super experience is designed to help make the journey of saving for retirement feel easy. Members are able to open an account in minutes.
"Members tell us they really like that they can manage and track their super alongside their everyday banking in the CommBank app.
"It's an intuitive experience that helps them stay connected to their financial goals and helps keep super as their longest-term investment front of mind."
Want more Best of the Best? Best-value term deposits revealed
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%).
Money's 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.
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