Consumers lost over $1 billion in super funds when Shield Master Fund and First Guardian collapsed. Advisors involved include Next Generation Advice and Venture Egg Financial Services.

For these consumers, the journey to disaster often started with an innocent looking ad, offering to “compare super funds”.

It’s unrealistic to expect lead generation firms, which are in the business of marketing, to vet the quality and ethics of a licensed financial service – so the fault lies with the licensed financial businesses – and AFSL licensees should be banned from taking these leads.

The ads rarely name a real business – either of a licensed financial service or even the lead generation business that posts the ad. The same lead generation firm might advertise using more than one fictitious name.

These types of ads are still prolific on social media in 2026.

Here are just some of lead generation ads from 2023. Some resulted in calls to me from Next Generation Wealth or Venture Egg, or another business related to this scandal.

I wrote about Super Comparison here.

I even contacted Venture Egg in early 2023 about Super Comparison ads – no reply of course.

Federal Court freezes assets of former director of Aus Super Compare.