Mark Rider is stepping down as CIO of Brighter Super after four years at the fund. But he’s not hanging up his boots just yet, with a plan to take on consulting and investment committee work, and run a marathon.

“I’ve been a runner all my life, but I’ve found with my working career that I’ve never been able to do consistent running,” he tells Investment Magazine.

“But when my youngest son ran a marathon, I saw all these older guys going past. And I said ‘I can do that’. And I’ve gotten a bit serious.”

In that sense, Rider can say he’s swapping one marathon for another. The fund he leaves is very different to the one he joined in early 2022. It was, after all, still technically two funds at that time – LGIAsuper and Energy Super – and just six weeks away from its acquisition of Suncorp’s superannuation business. What followed that acquisition was what Rider now calls “the metal bashing stage”.

“We just had to put it into some kind of shape,” Rider says. “We started with a lot of raw material, and we brought it together.”

But the timing was also good. Rider – who is speaking at the upcoming Investment Magazine Fiduciary Investors Symposium in Healesville, Victoria –  and the investment team were rethinking the portfolios at a time when investors all around the world were doing the same in response to the heightened macroeconomic and geopolitical uncertainty of the post-Covid years. That meant adding more inflation protection through infrastructure, and, later, shifting about $3 billion of its listed equities portfolio into active strategies in response to market concentration and higher expected volatility.

“I think the time when the merger actually happened was quite opportune, because we saw playing out 2021 the pickup in inflation, which was then met by much higher interest rates; the Ukraine War; the emergence of the Mag Seven; the return of [US President Donald Trump].

“When I came onboard I looked around and said ‘These are the assets we’ve got – how do we feel about them given the environment we’re in?’”

That process seems to have given the fund a good level of comfort about where it wants to invest its circa $32 billion of assets, with Brighter committing $500 million to investing in assets in Queensland on top of the $1 billion it already had invested in the Sunshine State.

Now, with the portfolio where it’s supposed to be, and the investment options consolidated – from 32 to 16 – Rider says that, like himself, the fund is ready for the next phase.

“One of the things that drove me to join Brighter Super was that it was trying to be a bit different in that its ambitions have not been to be a megafund. Its ambition has been to be closer to the members and provide – as the predecessor funds did – more of a personalised service… And so for us, the advice part is one of the areas where we’re really working hard [on].

“What’s critical, as we approach retirement, is that members get the advice they need to actually know what they’ve got to do, what type of retirement they’re looking at, whether they have time to make changes.”

That’s the future of superannuation, Rider says, and that’s where the focus has to be now. And that means the role of investments within the fund will naturally change as it shifts away from accumulation.

“The CIO’s still got a huge part to play; you’ve still got to build the portfolios, and you’re still going to have a mixture of age groups and various demographics… There’s still going to be a core part of the job that is just driving returns.

“[But] you’re probably looking at building in maybe different types of longevity solutions or different combinations [of products]; we have our Retire Easy product, which brings together the growth fund, the balanced fund and a cash bucket – and as a starting point that’s a very simple but effective solution for a lot of members. Then we’re looking at some more sophisticated things, including longevity.”

Brighter has commenced an executive recruitment process to find a new CIO, but it’s also got a strong bench, which it emphasised in the release announcing his departure.

“I’d say that my legacy at the fund will be the strength of the team, the culture of that investment team, the process and philosophy, and the execution of that it into a strongly and consistently performing fund.

“Superannuation never stays still. Things are always changing. [CEO] Kate Farrar is a dynamic leader and I joined the fund four years ago on her vision of what she was trying to do and where she was going to take the fund, and I think that’s been delivered on, if not more so.”

Register for the Fiduciary Investors Symposium. Limited seats available.