Before stapling was introduced, unless you nominated a fund, your super was paid into your employer’s default fund. So, it’s likely that you had a new account opened for you with a different super fund each time you changed jobs. If you’ve had more than one job, you may have more than one super account – which in turn means you could have multiple sets of fees and other costs (like insurance premiums) eating away at your retirement savings.

Stapling aims to reduce the number of super accounts you have over your working life. Being stapled to one fund aims to ensure that you don’t pay more fees and costs than you need to, because you won’t have a new super account opened every time you change jobs.

You’re automatically stapled to your current super fund if you have one. When you change jobs, your new employer will provide you with a choice form (either a paper/electronic form or via their onboarding platform) where you can specify where you’d like your super contributions to be made. If you don’t return a completed choice form to your employer, they’ll contact the Australian Taxation Office (ATO) to find out what your stapled fund is. Your employer must then pay your super contributions into that fund. If you don’t have a super fund (because you’ve just joined the workforce, for example), you can either:

• nominate a super fund, or
• let your employer put you into their default fund (which becomes your stapled fund in the future).

You can always change your super fund at any time. Stapling just means that unless you tell your employer otherwise, your super will stay with one fund throughout your working life.