Take Your Super Back wins 2026 Consumer Advocacy Award

Super Consumers Australia is proud to announce that the Take Your Super Back campaign has been awarded the 2026 Consumer Advocacy Award. The award is given by the Consumer Federation of Australia for the best consumer advocacy campaign or project of the past year and was announced at the ACCC National Consumer Congress on 19 June 2026.

The award recognises the work we have done to support people who lost money in the Shield and First Guardian Master Funds to get some of their superannuation back by making a complaint to the Australian Financial Complaints Authority (AFCA). 

• Since the Take Back Your Super site launched in December 2025, AFCA complaints have more than doubled to 3,500.

• About 99% of AFCA complaints relating to Shield and First Guardian have been successful so far. 

• That means we’ve been a part of helping people reclaim around $200 million in compensation.

We want to thank the Shield and First Guardian investors who have been so generous with their time and their stories and have helped us create guidance and tools that meet their needs. We also want to thank the hardworking staff at ASIC and AFCA who have worked with us on this project.

Our work continues: there are still many investors who haven’t made a complaint yet and we’ll keep working to support them to take their super back. We’re also pushing for changes to end the lead generation and sales practices that helped cause these losses in the first place. 

“If we want our financial system to work for all Australians, we need to strengthen our compensation framework and make sure our regulators have the powers they need to get compensation to people as quickly as possible,” said Jessica Spence, Director of Policy at Super Consumers Australia and lead of the Take Your Super Back campaign.

“We cannot let another person who did all the right things retire in poverty in this country,” Ms. Spence said. 

We’d also like to recognise the excellent work of the other finalists nominated for the award this year:

• Health Consumers’ Council WA (HCCWA) for its independent health consumer advocacy in Western Australia;
• Australian Consumers Insurance Lobby (ACIL) and the Owners Corporation Network (OCN) for the Strata Insurance Commission Reform Project;
• CHOICE for its work exposing low SPF levels in 16 common sunscreens available in Australia (Sunscreengate).