HOW DID YOU GET INTO IMPACT INVESTING?
Throughout my career, I have worked across a range of organisations in both the development and commercial sectors. This includes time spent working with Indigenous communities in Australia, mining and extractive industries, and also time serving in countries of the former Yugoslavia after the Balkan conflicts, with a strong focus on microfinance. I also worked for an investment bank in Australia for a number of years but was always drawn by both the need and the opportunity to leverage institutional capital to serve a positive developmental and societal purpose. Three years ago, I had the opportunity to join Christian Super as CEO and have thoroughly enjoyed leading an organization that is well recognized for its heritage and pioneering leadership in ethical and impact investing. As a faith-driven investor, Christian Super has always worked hard to invest our members’ money in line with their values and beliefs. Indeed, we believe that institutional capital can serve a redemptive purpose, achieving strong risk-adjusted financial returns whilst also contributing to positive societal or environmental outcomes. We firmly believe that this approach is entirely consistent with our obligations as a fiduciaries. To turn this ambition into reality, a typical day is quite busy with strategy development, engaging with regulators, meeting our members, and working with the investment team to manage our portfolio.
IS THERE ONE THEME WITHIN THE SDGS THAT YOU SPECIFICALLY IDENTIFY OR SYMPATHIZE WITH?
Our portfolio is mapped against different Sustainable Development Goals and does not have a bias towards a particular goal. Personally, the theme of financial inclusion and empowerment resonates deeply with me. I think that the world’s greatest entrepreneurs sit in the developing world and are often constrained by a lack of access to appropriate capital. I have seen, through many years spent working in Central and Eastern Europe, the transformative power of capital when it is deployed well, particularly through microfinance. When well implemented, there is dignity and empowerment for entrepreneurs through microfinance and financial inclusion, and the broader ongoing impacts of economic empowerment on a community’s wellbeing can be far-reaching, including positive gains in areas like education, health, child protection, and overall community mobilisation.
WHAT DIFFERENTIATES IMPACT INVESTING FROM TRADITIONAL INVESTING, IN YOUR OWN WORDS?
We engage closely with the work being done by various groups such as The Global Impact Investing Network (GIIN), International Finance Corporation and others to strengthen definitional standards and related operating principles for impact investing. For us, an impact investment is an investment made with the intention to generate positive, measurable social and/or environmental impact alongside a targeted risk-adjusted financial return. Across our overall investment portfolio, our approach is underpinned by four strategies: negative screening, positive screening (or ESG integration), active ownership and an actual asset class of impact investments, which comprise approximately 10% of our overall AUM. Our approach aims to ensure that all of our investments enable and promote human flourishing and creation care, but in the case of our actual impact investments, we also pay close attention to intentionality and additionality, targeting a broad cross-section of sectors, geographies and different investment instruments.
WHAT MOTIVATES YOU IN WHAT YOU ARE DOING ON A DAY-TO-DAY BASIS?
As a person of faith, I believe that financial markets have a critical role to play in doing good. A core motivation for the team at Christian Super is to faithfully steward our members’ retirement savings, investing in line with their values and beliefs. We also recognize the opportunity we have to positively influence the broader pension fund sector in sharing our continued learnings and journey as fiduciary and faith-driven investors. Although Christian Super is not a huge pension fund, we are well known both in Australia and internationally for our long-term focus and work in ethical and impact investing. Personally, I am excited to see the organization continue to grow, delivering strong financial outcomes for our members, and serving them throughout their working lives and into a purposeful retirement. Also that our fund can continue to contribute to building a movement for impact investing particularly for pension funds in Australia and around the world.
Christian Super is an Australian superannuation fund investing member retirement funds ethically in line with Christian values.
