Halal Superannuation in Australia: The 2026 Guide

For most working Australians, superannuation quietly becomes the largest sum of money they will ever own. It is also, for most Muslims, the least halal thing they own: default MySuper options hold bank shares, bonds, interest-earning cash and conventional insurance exposure as a matter of course. You screen a $5,000 brokerage account while a six-figure super balance compounds in riba - that is the standard, uncomfortable position, and fixing it is arguably the highest-impact move in Australian halal finance.

The good news: you have had the legal right to choose your super fund for years, and Shariah-compliant options exist. The honest news: the menu is short, one major option is currently closed to new members, and fees deserve real scrutiny. Everything below was verified against provider disclosures on August 5, 2026.

Option one: Salaam Super

Salaam - formerly Crescent Wealth, relaunched under the Salaam brand in April 2024 - sponsors Australia's pioneer Islamic super offering, operating as a division of the Russell Investments Master Trust with Total Risk Management (AFSL 238790) as trustee. Members choose between three pre-mixed options: Defensive (targeting inflation plus 2% over rolling five-year periods, 40-60% growth assets), Balanced (inflation plus 2.5% over seven years, 60-80% growth) and Growth (inflation plus 3% over ten years, 80-100% growth).

Published fees: administration of 0.21% of your balance plus $60 a year on all options, investment fees of 1.13% (Defensive), 1.36% (Balanced) and 1.34% (Growth), plus 0.02-0.03% transaction costs. No establishment, withdrawal, contribution or termination fees. Governance is the strongest disclosure point: investments are screened to AAOIFI standards - Salaam is an AAOIFI member - and audited annually by Dar Al Sharia, with quarterly re-screens, removal of holdings that fall out of compliance, and purification of impure income to charity. The current option series dates from 31 May 2024; Salaam publishes annualised performance on its site, but the figure is rendered dynamically and we could not capture it at our crawl, so check their performance page directly.

Option two: Hejaz Islamic Super and Pension - currently paused

Hejaz promotes an Islamic Super and Pension within AMG Super, with three options: Growth (75% growth assets), Balanced (60%) and Conservative (35%), performance inception 8 August 2023. Published fees as of 21 February 2025: investment fees of 1.00% (Growth), 1.06% (Balanced) and 1.15% (Conservative) plus small transaction costs, administration of $65 a year plus an estimated 0.49% of your balance. AIA Australia is the group insurer; Deloitte audits the fund.

The critical fact: at our August 2026 verification, both the super and pension pages carried a notice that Hejaz is pausing new members while it reviews the offering. Existing members continue as usual; prospective members can only register interest. Until that changes, Hejaz is not practically on the menu for new money, which narrows the retail choice considerably.

Option three: Meezan Wealth's advised portfolios

Meezan Wealth takes a different architecture: rather than sponsoring a branded super product, it builds Sharia-compliant managed portfolios inside Super Simplifier, an APRA-regulated fund on the DASH platform issued by Equity Trustees Superannuation Limited (AFSL 229757). Published fees: 0.71% MDA management, 0.35% super administration, 0.03% expense recovery, with nil establishment, contribution, withdrawal or exit fees. Optional death, TPD, trauma and income protection cover is available, and the account converts to an account-based or transition-to-retirement pension later. Screening runs on AAOIFI standards via IdealRatings with SRA Consulting as Shariah board, and the quarterly purification methodology is published in detail. Because this is an advised product, you go through Meezan as adviser rather than signing up directly - a feature if you want advice, a layer if you do not. One flag: portfolio performance shown on its site was dated December 2023 at our review, badly stale.

Option four: the SMSF route

A self-managed fund gives you total investment control - screened ETFs, the MCCA Income Fund, ICFAL's institutional membership (which returned 4.4% p.a. over five and ten years at our review), direct property through Islamic SMSF finance from half a dozen providers. It also gives you trustee obligations, accounting and audit costs, and full responsibility. It suits engaged investors with larger balances; the complete treatment is in our halal SMSF guide.

The comparison

What you give up, honestly

Compliance has a price and it is worth stating. Total costs on the halal options above run meaningfully higher than Australia's cheapest MySuper defaults, and none of these funds can hold the conventional banks and bond portfolios that drive part of mainstream balanced-fund returns. Against that: your retirement stops compounding in riba, screening and purification are handled at fund level, and the insurance and consolidation machinery of ordinary super still works. Whether the fee gap is a fair price for compliance is a values question; that the gap exists is a factual one, and pretending otherwise would be marketing.

How to actually switch

Joining is online with your TFN; your new fund handles rollover from the old one. Two cautions before you pull the trigger: consolidating can cancel insurance cover attached to the old account - Salaam's own FAQ warns about this - so check what cover you hold and whether you need replacement first, and compare the exit implications at your current fund. Employers simply pay into the new fund once you nominate it; Salaam even publishes a compliance letter for employers who question the fund's status. The full walkthrough, including the traps, is in switching to halal super. For retirees, both Salaam (via iQ Retirement) and Meezan support Shariah-compliant pension phases - covered in the halal retirement drawdown guide. And for how the funds differ in depth, read the Hejaz vs Salaam comparison.

Reading a super fund's Shariah claims critically

The options above all publish real governance, but the skill of evaluating them transfers to whatever the market offers next. The questions that separate substance from branding: Who certifies - a named external firm or board (Dar Al Sharia, SRA Consulting, a named scholar panel) or an anonymous 'Shariah advisers'? Against what standard - AAOIFI is the benchmark all three current providers cite; a fund naming no standard is asking for trust without a yardstick. How often - annual audits plus quarterly re-screens is the published cadence at the serious end; a one-time launch certification that never renews is a photograph, not supervision. What happens to impure income - purification to charity should be documented, and Meezan's worked-example disclosure shows what full transparency looks like. And what do they publish - certificates, compliance letters, screening methodologies, holdings disclosures; every document a fund posts is a claim you can check, and every absence is information too.

One more structural point worth understanding: in all three retail options, the Islamic layer is the investment screening, not the super wrapper - trustees, administrators and insurers are conventional financial institutions performing regulated roles. Scholars generally treat this as acceptable, since the member's money is invested compliantly and the wrapper is legal machinery, but it is worth knowing what you are and are not getting: halal super in Australia means Shariah-compliant investment options inside conventional trust structures, with group insurance that raises its own questions covered in our income protection article. Perfect structures do not exist here yet; well-governed screened ones do, and the difference between them and a default fund is enormous.

Verified August 5, 2026. Super decisions interact with insurance, tax and employer arrangements; this is general information, and the PDS plus, where useful, licensed advice should precede a switch.