Sunday 7th December 2025
Building reach and capability: KeyInvest’s plans for 2026
For advisers reassessing their post–Division 296 toolkit, this article explains how 147-year-old KeyInvest is methodically upgrading its people, products and technology to play a more practical role in tax-effective bonds and private credit in 2026.
As 2025 winds down, KeyInvest looks less like a staid old friendly society and more like a mid-rebuild football club that’s quietly stacked its list ahead of a big season. With a 147-year history in mutual life insurance and tax-effective investing, the Adelaide-born group is signalling that 2026 is intended to be a genuinely transformational year, not just another line in the annual report.
The clearest early indicator is distribution. In December, KeyInvest added two seasoned operators, Sydney-based Jason Goodacre and Adelaide-based Jarrad Gray, as senior distribution managers, joining recent hire Ciaran McAssey to bolster adviser coverage nationwide. Goodacre brings more than three decades across BT, Thomson Reuters, IRESS and MidWinter, while Gray arrives with 25+ years in wealth roles at ANZ, CBA and Australian Unity and a deep familiarity with investment bonds. Together, they’re being deployed to deepen relationships with advisers, family offices and dealer groups along the East Coast and in South Australia, anchoring a more assertive national presence in 2026.
Inside the business, that distribution push sits alongside a broader program of “plumbing and wiring” upgrades. The firm has flagged a new adviser portal, improved client servicing and a more disciplined investment management framework as key planks of its transformation agenda. Those initiatives dovetail neatly with the strategic priorities laid out in recent annual reports: modernising technology, automating member processes, and boosting bond and fund returns while launching new products for advisers and members.
The external environment is doing some of the heavy lifting. With Division 296 tax reforms set to bite on large super balances, advisers are hunting for vehicles that can complement, or partially substitute for, traditional superannuation strategies. Investment bonds, long a niche of the friendly society world, are back in vogue for their tax-paid structure, estate planning flexibility and ability to move wealth between generations without dragging beneficiaries through the super and pension rules maze. KeyInvest, with its long-running Investment Bond and Funeral Bond franchises, is positioning 2026 as the year it leans harder into that renewed demand.
Demographics remain a quiet but powerful tailwind. KeyInvest has long been known for funeral bonds and conservative, capital-protected benefit funds, and its merger with Australian Friendly Society in 2022 materially increased its footprint in that market. With an ageing population and more families planning ahead for intergenerational transfers, the group enters 2026 with a larger member base and deeper relationships with funeral directors and advisers in what is, realistically, a structurally growing niche.
On the solutions side, the next 12–18 months are likely to see an emphasis on enhancing existing bond ranges rather than simply proliferating new line items. That could mean more contemporary investment options within the Investment Bond architecture, and features that make it easier for advisers to use bonds for education funding, legacy planning and long-horizon investing in the post-Division-296 world. With Lonsec and other research houses already rating core products well, the challenge in 2026 is to turn that research-paper goodwill into fresh waves of adoption.
Distribution, of course, is where that rubber meets the road. Goodacre and Gray are being added to an already clearly articulated leadership structure that includes a Chief Sales and Distribution Officer and funeral bond distribution. In practice, 2026 is likely to feature more structured national campaigns: adviser roadshows, masterclass-style webinars on tax-smart investing, and deeper engagement with practices that want to build repeatable advice frameworks around investment bonds and private credit.
Technology will sit in the background of most of these moves, but it’s arguably the biggest swing factor in how transformational 2026 feels to advisers and members. A modernised adviser portal with better transparency on unit prices, transaction status and client holdings, plus more automated processing behind the scenes, should reduce friction and free up relationship staff to spend more time on strategy and less on paperwork. If KeyInvest executes well, by the end of 2026 advisers may experience it less as a legacy friendly society and more as a nimble, API-friendly specialist in tax-effective, goals-based investing.
Culture and community will also matter. The organisation’s long history, from its origins as the Independent Order of Odd Fellows in 1878, through credit union and retirement village forays, to its current focus on funds management and life products, has conferred a strong sense of identity and a charitable footprint via the KeyInvest Foundation. In 2026, expect more visible articulation of how exclusion screens and community support activities sit alongside the hard-edged work of prudential remediation and balance-sheet optimisation.
Put all of this together and 2026 looks set to be a thoroughly interesting year. With fresh distribution firepower, a sharpened focus on tax-effective bonds and private credit, and the discipline that comes from operating under an APRA microscope, the ingredients for a genuine step-change are in place. What lies ahead now depends on how effectively the group can convert history, values and strategy into the one thing advisers want to see: durable, well-managed outcomes.
James is an experienced senior journalist and editor of The Inside Network's publications.
