I am pleased to present the Public Trustee’s 2025-26 Annual Report.  The Public Trustee continues to play a vital role in supporting the financial management of vulnerable South Australian’s that have impaired decision-making abilities and to provide trust administration and deceased estate and Will writing for eligible customers.

Cost of living pressures, including housing availability and affordability, are a particular concern to many of the people that the Public Trustee supports. Financial planning for vulnerable customers with limited assets and income is even more challenging in the current environment. The demand for financial administration services continues to grow with 586 new financial administration appointments made by the South Australian Civil and Administrative Tribunal and the Courts in 2025-26. This growth is a result of customers affected by mental illness, dementia, substance abuse and acquired brain injuries. The Public Trustee manages almost $2.4 billion of customer assets.

This year we updated our Strategic Plan. Our planning reflects an evolution in organisational priorities with completion of the replacement of our two major systems over the past four financial years. The replacement of the organisation’s Customer Relationship Management System (2021 to 2022) and Customer Financial System (2023 to 2025) took significant management and staff effort and with these projects complete we are now able to refocus on other priority tasks to support our customers and our staff.

The Strategic Plan for 2026-2029 reflects an emphasis on our customers, our people and our business. Key priorities include:

• Our Customers - we promote a culture of responsiveness and resolution which shows respect and empathy
• Our People - we support the development and wellbeing of our staff
• Our Business - we improve our business processes and drive performance whilst effectively managing risk.

The Public Trustee continued its commitment to listening to customers through the annual Customer Satisfaction Survey. Most areas showed similar or slightly improved satisfaction levels compared to last year however the financial administration customers showed a reduced satisfaction level. This was likely to be a result of staff turnover creating less consistency in case officers, cost of living pressures, and the need to refine payment cycles as a result of the finance system implementation. The survey identified areas where customers want improvement, particularly more regular progress updates, faster responses to calls and emails, clearer explanations of fees and charges, better information about timeframes and decisions, and stronger continuity when staff change. The Public Trustee will use this feedback to guide ongoing service improvement, with a focus on communication, responsiveness, transparency and consistency of customer experience.

A new cloud-based telephone system was introduced in 2026 enabling better call management, improved call recording, enhanced capability for staff working from home and modern call queuing and call back options.  In addition, a trial of artificial intelligence technology to summarise telephone calls was successful, significantly improving our ability to document our customer telephone interactions and retain these within our customer relationship management system. This improves our governance, efficiency and enables our improved customer service.

The Public Trustee has an ongoing commitment to building a high-performing, value driven and psychologically safe workplace. Our workforce and organisational development remained a major focus and the management of psychosocial risks was a particular priority. The medical conditions of many of our financial administration customers mean that our staff are often exposed to aggression and abusive behaviours.  Training and revised procedures to manage incidents have been established and will continue to evolve. Significant effort was also put into better defining the role of our Human Resources function and ensuring that it was resourced to deliver on that role. The Attorney-General’s department also continues to provide Human Resources support to the Public Trustee.

Maturing the utilisation and functionality of the new customer financial system technology was a priority in 2025-26 to ensure that the financial system was robust, payment processing timeframes were reduced, and manual work arounds for back-office functions were minimised.  A project plan has been established to continue to transform the customer finance function over the next 18 months including initiatives to ensure our workforce has the skills required to maximise the benefits of our modernised technology.

The Investment Advisory Committee continued to refine investment strategies to improve returns for customers. Whilst 2025-26 investment markets were impacted by geopolitical policies and international conflicts, investment returns were again strong for Public Trustee customers.

During the financial year, the Reserve Bank of Australia increased interest rates to 4.35%, in response to persistent inflation. This has been beneficial for our customers cash investments, which account for a large portion of funds under management.

For the financial year, investment returns ranged from 3.60% for Cash to 8.84% for High Growth, net of fees. Overall, the Public Trustee’s investment strategies continue to perform soundly over the long term, with a continued focus on quality and downside protection. Ten-year returns stand at 2.02% for Cash to 8.59% for High Growth, net of fees. Due to the recent high levels of inflation (CPI) some investments trail CPI based objectives over their suggested time frames. This may continue in the short term, until inflation comes down to normalised levels.

During the year several internal audits were delivered including reviews of physical security controls, controls for the customer finance system including customer Invoice processing, social engineering attack safeguards, Information Technology security and a post implementation review of the implementation of the customer financial system.

The Public Trustee’s net operating result for 2025-26 was $0.9 million favourable to budget primarily due to high real estate capital commissions and favourable management fees and corporate investments with investment markets continuing to perform well in 2025-2026.

The Public Trustee continues to take great pride in providing essential financial services to our customers, many of whom are the most vulnerable people in South Australia. I commend the commitment and passion of the Public Trustee’s staff in supporting our customers.

Tony Brumfield
Public Trustee