The corporate regulator has warned superannuation fund trustees and executives that it will investigate how the country’s biggest retirement savings managers respond to complaints from their members and whether there is a bigger blind spot around those issues that requires action.

Australian Securities and Investments Commission chair Joe Longo, speaking at a lunch at AmCham in Sydney on Thursday, said trustees should have initiated their own reviews in response to complaints that the payment of funds to relatives of members who had died were handled.