For Chris Artis, chief investment officer of the $1.1 billion Meat Industry Employees Super Fund (MIESF), the fact the fund passed the 2024 Your Future Your Super test with flying colours is proof that even very small funds have a legitimate place in the superannuation landscape.
“MIESF is in a luxurious position,” Artis says.
“We’ve got very strong historical performance on the Your Future Your Super test, where we’re head-and-shoulders above anybody else, with a highest score. So a lot of things work for us.”
Artis says he’s far more hands-on as a CIO than his peers in other funds and is supported in managing the fund’s assets by Antipodean Capital’s director of strategy, Craig Ferguson. Artis says Ferguson’s approach mirrors his own, in that “his lens is not a super peer comparison”.
“He just says, ‘This is what the market looks like it’s doing, therefore, these are the things that you need to do to either protect for the downside or take advantage of upside opportunity’,” Artis says.
“That’s what I liked about Craig’s angle, because from the moment I took on this job at MIESF in 2017 I always looked at it as a family office. It has the key stakeholder: the Victorian branch of the Australasian Meat Industry Employees Union, who set the fund up over 42 years ago for meatworkers across Australia. The union is on the same floor, so I get to see the secretary; he’s on the board and obviously he’s a key member of the stakeholder.
“So for me, one stakeholder, and [an approach of] don’t lose money and make money when it’s appropriate, was the clearest alignment that I’ve ever had in my 25 years working for a whole bunch of super funds.”
Keeling things in focus
Artis says the physical proximity to the fund’s key stakeholder helps keep things in focus.
“I’ve got to look at the secretary of the union every day of the week, and say, mate, I’ve just lost money for our members, or we’ve made money,” he says.
“So it’s a clear line of stakeholder responsibility and accountability.”
Artis says the scale of the fund means that his role is far more focused on investment management than for many of his peers in bigger funds.
“When I go to conferences with fellow CIOs and other investment specialists, and we talk about how much time one spends on investments, I’m always the first to say I’m lucky and different from the rest of you and my institutional peers, in the sense that I get to spend about 95 per cent or 97 per cent on investment issues,” he says.
“It’s a team of one, and there is some support from the CFO, who looks after the direct properties that we have in our portfolio and the leasing that goes underneath that. But by and large, the CIO role is a team of one in its purest form.”
Antipodean provides input, but all fund investment decisions rest ultimately with Artis. He says he collaborates closely with MEISF chief executive Katherine Kaspar and chair Chris White and attends to “stakeholder management up and down to make sure that we’re on the same page in relation to investment ideas and strategies”.
“I’m lucky in the sense that being one of the smallest funds in the marketplace, $1.1-plus billion – which is the highest we’ve ever been – I get to do things that my peers can’t do.”
Around 70 per cent of MIESF assets are managed by external asset manager, but Artis manages about 30 per cent in-house, covering equities, term deposits, listed hybrids, cash and property. Managing assets in-house isn’t a new experience for Artis: portfolios were managed in-house as long ago as in 1987, when he worked at Emergency Services and State Super (ESSSuper). Artis arrived at MIESF via stints at Vision Super, TelstraSuper and State Street Global Advisors.
Despite MIESF’s track record, in November last year it signed heads of agreement with the $55 billion CareSuper to explore a transfer of its 17,000 members, and Artis is realistic and philosophical about what that might mean, should it proceed.
“I’m approaching my eighth year at MIESF,” he says.
“It’s a pretty good track record that I’m handing over, even though it will disappear because we’re going into a bigger fund. Our history will be gone, so it will only be there in the annals of the APRA data.
“Assuming it all goes well from the due diligence point of view, the fund merges sometime in 2025 then the $1 billion will go across. When the time is right, we’ll have a conversation with the team at Care to see if there’s a role, and if there isn’t, it doesn’t matter. I mean, there’s plenty of opportunities in the marketplace. I’m an optimistic kind of guy.”
Take the hint
More CIOs could take the hint and move on when the time is right – there are “too many old guys hanging around”, he says.
“I’ve seen too many old CIOs who just hang around,” he says. “There’s life beyond investment management.
“Many CIOs don’t move because they’re getting paid pretty well, a lot of now are more stakeholder management than managing money.”
Artis says he is, and always has been, a strong supporter of active management and a hands-on role for the CIO.
“I don’t have any time for funds who just hug a benchmark, do very little activity and just clip the ticket,” he says.
“That is just a waste of time. If all you’re doing is shuffling paper between your asset consultant and the board, and then you’re not making any decisions, and you’re sort of thereabouts and your fees aren’t really reflecting your inactivity, then really, are you delivering on what you should be? So that’s always my starting point.”
