ACTU smacks distracted APRA over Shield, First Guardian

Mike Taylor

Managing Editor/Publisher, Financial Newswire

13 February 2026

Australia’s peak trade union body, the Australian Council of Trade Unions, has launched an attack on the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA) accusing the regulator of prioritising an operating surplus over appropriate oversight superannuation trustees.

In doing so, the ACTU has called on APRA to “fix its priorities and crack down on predatory platform providers that destroyed workers’ life savings”.

“APRA is more than ten times more interested in a fund’s marketing and sponsorship, than it is in preventing $1 billion being robbed from Australian workers’ life savings by dodgy providers, according to its own data,” ACTU assistant secretary, Joseph Mitchell said.

The ACTU statement also referenced the collapse of Shield and First Guardian claiming: “these dodgy investment products were provided to workers by superannuation trustees, such as Diversa Trustees, known to APRA to have insufficient governance arrangements”.

“The failure of providers to meet their promises is the definition of prudential risk – something APRA ignored,” the union group said.

“Instead of preventing poorly governed trustees from offering poorly overseen products, APRA was seemingly saving its resources to deliver an operational surplus and using the rest to issue statutory notices about other funds’ sponsorship arrangements. This cost members their life savings,” the ACTU claimed

“Between 1 July 2021 to 31 December 2025, APRA directed more than ten times the resources to expenditure, such as sponsorships, as it did to investigating superannuation platforms and onboarding, issuing 124 statutory notices relating to trustee expenditure and only 10 information requests relating to onboarding and monitoring platforms.

“This is despite the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) prohibiting investment into Shield in February 2024 and First Guardian’s responsible entity prohibiting investment in May 2024.

“APRA seemingly did not ask questions about the unprecedented inflow of millions of dollars into Shield and First Guardian between 2021-2024 during which Diversa funds in First Guardian increased by 1,431% from $17.7 million to $271 million and Shield grew from $0 to $501 million through Equity Trustees and Macquarie.

“To fulfill its mandate and identify risks proactively, APRA must look at the red flags in front of it. Instead, APRA was focusing more than ten times the resources on sponsorships, while predatory providers siphoned $1 billion out of Australians’ savings.”