HUB24 Review: Is It Any Good, or Just A Rip Off Machine?
By Andy Darroch, independent financial adviser. Updated September 2026.
The short answer: HUB24 is a superb business (rip off machine) and a terrible place for your super. Over the last ten financial years, HUB24 Super Fund members earned 4.2% a year. The low-cost industry funds we recommend earned 8.3% on the same basis. HUB24 lost in every one of those ten years. If an adviser has recommended it, the recommendation is about their fee, they want to direct your super balance into their pocket, it’s got nothing to do with your retirement.
If you're reading this, one of two things has happened. Either a financial adviser has handed you a Statement of Advice recommending you roll your super into HUB24, or you already did, and you’re wondering…. Are you getting ripped off?
Either way, good news. I've read HUB24's audited financial statements back to 2014, every APRA dataset that mentions them, and more Statements of Advice recommending HUB24 than any human should. Here is what they say.
What is HUB24? (Hint: A collosal waste of your money)
HUB24 is a wrap platform. A wrap is an administration service that lets an adviser hold your super, managed funds, shares, ETFs and cash in one account, charge fees against it, and report on it prettily. It is not an investment. It is a shopping trolley. What goes in the trolley is up to the adviser, and the trolley charges rent.
Wraps are also called "adviser funds", which is the honest name. Netwealth, HUB24, Macquarie Wrap, AMP MyNorth, CFS Edge, Centric, Praemium, Dash: different logos, one purpose. They exist to pay ongoing fees to financial planners. That is the product.
HUB24 Limited (ASX: HUB) runs the platform. The HUB24 Super Fund is the super product, with Equity Trustees as trustee. At 30 June 2025 it held $48.5 billion across roughly 144,000 accounts and is growing faster than anything else in super. That tells you how easy it is to sell, not how good it is to own.
One habit worth forming before you read on: every time you see the word "adviser" in your Statement of Advice, substitute "salesperson". The document will make a great deal more sense.
Is HUB24 a good super fund? (Hint: No!)
Depends who's asking.
If you're a shareholder: yes, magnificent, buy more. If you’re the adviser getting paid huge cushy fees for doing absolutely no work, yes!
If you're a member: here is the HUB24 Super Fund's whole-of-fund return from its audited accounts, against a composite of the low-cost industry funds we recommend, blended for the same pension/accumulation mix HUB24 has each year. Same tax, same phase, same decade.
| Financial year | HUB24 Super Fund | Industry funds we recommend | Gap |
|---|---|---|---|
| FY2016 | 0.3% | 4.5% | -4.2 |
| FY2017 | 4.4% | 11.8% | -7.4 |
| FY2018 | 5.2% | 11.1% | -5.9 |
| FY2019 | 5.6% | 9.4% | -3.8 |
| FY2020 | -3.0% | -0.1% | -2.9 |
| FY2021 | 14.1% | 20.3% | -6.2 |
| FY2022 | -8.1% | -2.8% | -5.4 |
| FY2023 | 8.0% | 9.9% | -1.9 |
| FY2024 | 8.7% | 9.6% | -0.9 |
| FY2025 | 8.9% | 10.7% | -1.8 |
| Ten years, p.a. | 4.2% | 8.3% | -4.0 |
$100,000 in HUB24 Super in July 2015 became $151,263. The same money in the industry funds we recommend became $221,447. That is $70,000 the industry funds made you that HUB24 didn't, and it's before the ongoing adviser fee, which HUB24 deducts from your account and reports in its own accounts as a $314 million line item (more on that shortly).
Ten years. Ten losses. HUB24 members, in aggregate, have not beaten a plain default Balanced option at a good industry fund in a single financial year. Total earnings HUB24 members gave up against that benchmark over the decade: about $4.4 billion. That's not a bad year. That's a business model.
HUB24 will say the comparison is unfair because a wrap's whole-of-fund return blends every member's portfolio and holds a bit less in growth assets. Fine. I built a growth-matched benchmark too (half Balanced, half Conservative Balanced, which lands at about 67% growth, near enough identical to HUB24's own allocation). HUB24 still trails by 2.9% a year on average and loses nine years out of ten. Match the risk however you like. The gap doesn't close, because the gap isn't risk. The gap is what advisers put in the trolley, and what they charge for it.
Why does this keep happening? The mechanic and the car company
You're buying a car. Option one: any car you want, straight from the manufacturer. Option two: your local mechanic offers to design and build you one from scratch, so you have "control".
Who builds a better car? A suburban mechanic, or a company with decades of experience, thousands of engineers and a proven track record? I like my mechanic. I don't need him to build my car, because he cannot compete with Toyota.
A big industry fund is the car company. It runs hundreds of billions, employs investment teams by the hundred, and gets access and pricing from global managers that you cannot buy at retail. I once took the broadest wrap investment menu I could find, about 800 funds, and cross-checked it against the managers inside one industry fund's Balanced option. Most of those managers weren't on the wrap at all. Not the fund, the manager. A $200 billion fund gets a seat at tables your adviser doesn't know exist.
A HUB24 portfolio is the mechanic's car. Assembled in a suburban office by someone who is, at best, a talented amateur at portfolio construction, from parts the real manufacturers won't sell them. And you pay more for it. Every month. Forever.
HUB24 fees explained (admin, investment, advice)
Fees deducted from HUB24 Super Fund member accounts, from the audited statements:
| Financial year | Admin | Investment | Advice fees paid to advisers | Total | Total as % of assets |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| FY2021 | $33m | $19m | $100m | $152m | 1.14% |
| FY2023 | $57m | $36m | $190m | $284m | 1.14% |
| FY2025 | $87m | $67m | $314m | $468m | 0.96% |
Read the advice column again. Since FY2019, $1.05 billion in ongoing adviser fees has come out of HUB24 member accounts. That is twice what HUB24 itself charged to run the thing. The platform is not the product. The platform is the pipe, and your adviser's ongoing fee is what flows through it: deducted every month like clockwork, whether your adviser is working, useless, talented, smart, dumb or asleep. An industry fund won't let them plumb that pipe, which is the entire reason you're being asked to leave one.
The table also excludes the fees inside the managed funds and managed portfolios on the platform, because those are netted out of the unit price before the accounts ever see them. Add those in and a typical advised HUB24 portfolio is comfortably north of 1.5% a year all-in. A good industry fund Balanced option is around 0.6%.
Does 1% matter? Over ten years it's 9% of your balance. Over twenty, 17%. At 3% a year, roughly where HUB24 has actually sat against the funds we recommend, you lose a quarter of your super in a decade and 43% over twenty years. Nobody notices, because the balance still goes up. It just goes up by less, forever, and the difference is somebody else's boat.
| HUB24 Super | Low-cost industry funds we recommend | |
|---|---|---|
| Ten-year return p.a. (FY16 to FY25) | 4.2% | 8.3% |
| Years beaten the other | 0 of 10 | 10 of 10 |
| Growth-matched benchmark | Trails by 2.9% p.a. | |
| Who builds the portfolio | The mechanic | The car company |
| Ongoing adviser fee | Yes, monthly, from your balance | No |
| Unlisted infrastructure, private equity, private credit | No | Yes |
| What happens if you sack the adviser | You keep a HUB24 account and no idea what is in it | Nothing. It keeps running |
That last row is the quiet genius of the wrap model. Put someone in an industry fund and they can leave you tomorrow and lose nothing. Put someone in a wrap full of managed portfolios and they cannot leave without another adviser to unpick it. A portfolio you can't evaluate is a portfolio you can't leave, and that, not performance, is what the platform is built for.
HUB24 vs Netwealth
Same species. Netwealth's whole-of-fund return is fractionally better and it has the same fundamental problem: it exists so advisers can charge you ongoing fees on a portfolio that loses to a default option every year. Choosing between them is choosing which brand rips you off.
Is HUB24 safe?
Yes. Let's be clear about this, because Reddit isn't. Your assets sit with a custodian, Equity Trustees is the trustee, HUB24 is ASX-listed, APRA-regulated and profitable. Nobody is going to run off with your money.
The risk is not theft. The risk is slow, compliant, fully disclosed, entirely legal underperformance, signed off by you on page 47 of a Statement of Advice you didn't read. A lot of people are told, or made to feel, that leaving an industry fund protects their super from the finance industry. By moving to a wrap you do the exact opposite: you hand the finance industry a key to your account and a standing order to pay itself.
HUB24 complaints: the ones that actually matter
Forget the "app was slow" reviews. Here's what the APRA data says: in FY2025, 5,737 members left HUB24 Super via full rollover, taking $1.19 billion with them. Over ten years, 27,759 members have fully rolled out. People do work it out. It just tends to take a few years and a five-figure lesson.
The complaint I hear most in my office is simpler: "I don't know what I'm paying, I don't know what I'm invested in, and I can't tell if I'm doing well." That's not a bug. That's the design.
Can you use HUB24 without a financial adviser?
Technically, through some direct channels, yes. Practically, HUB24 is an adviser product: the pricing, the menu and the whole design assume someone is being paid to sit between you and it. If you're the sort of person who'd run it yourself, you're the sort of person who should be in a low-cost index option in an industry fund, or an ETF portfolio, and getting on with your life.
Who is HUB24 actually right for?
Honestly, pretty much no one. A narrow group. By narrow group, maybe a few thousand in the whole country. People with genuinely complex holdings (large direct share portfolios with embedded capital gains, unusual assets, estate structures) who need consolidated reporting and are happy to pay for it with open eyes.
For the 35-year-old engineer, the 52-year-old nurse, the couple with $900,000 between them heading into retirement: no. Your investment needs are not bespoke, whatever the SOA says. Everyone falls into a bucket. You need a high-quality, diversified, low-fee portfolio that leaks the least in tax, and an industry fund already built you one. You're being asked to leave it so someone can clip 0.65% a year for the privilege of building a worse one.
What to do with the SOA in your hand
Don't sign it yet.
Every Statement of Advice recommending HUB24 that has crossed my desk was written by someone who gets paid, every month, for as long as you stay. That is not a reason to assume the advice is wrong. It is a reason to get advice from someone who doesn't.
That's what I do. Independent Wealth Advice is a flat-fee, fully independent firm. No commissions, no ongoing fees, no platform payments, no wraps. You pay once, for advice, the way you'd pay a lawyer or a surgeon. I'd make ten times as much running the standard model. I'd rather sleep.
Book an Initial Consultation. $330, 45 minutes, on Zoom.
The consultation is the start of getting proper advice. On the call I'll tell you whether you need advice at all, what it would cover, and what it costs. Some people need a full Statement of Advice. Some people need to be told they're fine where they are, and they leave with that. The $330 is credited in full against the advice fee if you proceed.
I take four consultations a week and no more. If the booking page shows nothing this week, that's why.
Frequently asked questions
Is HUB24 a good superannuation fund?
No. It’s a rip off machine.
HUB24 Super Fund's audited whole-of-fund return trailed a composite of the low-cost industry funds we recommend in every financial year from FY2016 to FY2025: 4.2% a year versus 8.3%. For shareholders it has been excellent.
What is HUB24?
A wrap platform, sometimes called an adviser fund: an administration service that holds your super and investments in one account so an adviser can manage, report on, and charge fees against them. It is not an investment.
Who owns HUB24?
HUB24 Limited, listed on the ASX (ticker HUB). The trustee of the HUB24 Super Fund is Equity Trustees Superannuation Limited.
Is HUB24 safe?
Yes. APRA-regulated, custodially held, ASX-listed and profitable. The risk with HUB24 is underperformance and fees, not losing your capital.
What are HUB24's fees?
In FY2025, $468 million was deducted from member accounts: $87 million administration, $67 million investment and $314 million in adviser fees, about 0.96% of assets before the fees inside the underlying funds. A typical advised HUB24 portfolio costs 1.5% a year or more all-in.
Is HUB24 a super fund or a platform?
Both. HUB24 is the platform; the HUB24 Super Fund is the super product that sits on it.
Can I use HUB24 without a financial adviser?
In limited cases, but it's priced and built for advised clients. A self-directed investor is better off in an industry fund index option or an ETF portfolio.
HUB24 vs Netwealth: which is better?
Neither. Both are wrap platforms with the same fee model and both have trailed good industry funds every year for a decade.
Where does HUB24 rank in Australia?
By inflows, near the top of every platform league table. By member returns, behind the major industry fund Balanced options for ten consecutive years.
My adviser recommended HUB24. What should I do?
Get advice from someone who isn't paid if you sign. Book an Initial Consultation above.
Sources: HUB24 Super Fund audited financial statements FY2014 to FY2025; APRA fund-level and product statistics; the published returns of three A+ industry funds, averaged, and adjusted to match the mix of pension and accumulation members HUB24 has each year. HUB24's returns are worked out from its own audited accounts: what the fund started the year with, what it finished with, and the money that came in and went out in between. Andy Darroch is Director of Independent Wealth Advice Pty Ltd (AFSL 550651), a flat-fee independent adviser. He receives no commissions or platform payments. General information only; it does not consider your circumstances.
