Back in 2017, casting his eye around after a stint in sales at State Street, Chris Artis found himself with two options: he could take a role as an asset class head at a large super fund; or become CIO of the tiny Meat Industry Employees’ Superannuation Fund (MIESF).  
 
“I just wanted to have a crack,” Artis tells Investment Magazine. “I wasn’t looking at it from a longevity perspective. I said ‘I’m happy to give you guys three to five years’, and it ended up being eight and a half.” 
 
Over those eight and a half years, Artis delivered alpha of 2.5 per cent per annum and regularly put MIESF at the top of the performance charts until its merger, in September, with CareSuper. Having worked in roles spanning investments, member services, sales and accounting over the course of his career, Artis considers that performance to be, at least in part, a result of his generalist skillset.   
 
“I take that with a sense of pride; being a generalist meant I could do a lot of things reasonably well and could call out bullshit from the so-called experts.” 
 
But that generalist role is one that’s gradually disappeared from the superannuation industry as it has consolidated, a natural outcome of the sheer size of many funds and the silos that have developed across – and within – investments, operations and compliance; silos many funds are now trying to break open by adopting the total portfolio approach.  
 
“It’s the nature of the demands; having so much money coming into the top 10 super funds… does require a degree of specialisation and, as a generalist, that’s a challenge,” Artis says.  
 
“Somebody has to sit above that, whether it’s head of strategy or asset allocation, to then pull out the best ideas from those asset class silos. It’s a tension; everybody talks about whole of portfolio outcomes, but when you’re a small fund you do it anyway. It’s horses for courses.” 
 
Not that small funds aren’t constrained in their own ways.  
 
“There’s always a fee budget. The only way I could play that was to back certain managers early if they were coming to the market. I always had a policy, even when I was at Telstra[Super] and even at ESSS – less so then – I was always happy to take a manager meeting.  
 
“The respect I had in not being an arsehole portfolio manager or CIO that didn’t return emails or phone calls – that wasn’t who I was. I wear that with pride. I was always happy to see new ideas.  
 
“Those new ideas led to opportunities to back new investment vehicles early and get really good fee deals, hence why MIESF’s investment fee, at under 50 basis points for our MySuper product, was pretty well positioned against all my other peers.”  
 
MIESF was usually a standout in superannuation performance tables and evidence, to some in the industry, that APRA’s obsession with scale – and its belief in scale as a proxy for member outcomes – was wrongheaded.  
 
“I’m not critical of Your Future Your Super,” Artis says.  
 
“It allowed the marketplace and the industry to see which fund was actually getting good outcomes for the dollar spent. MIESF never participated in any of the SuperRatings or Chant West or Rainmaker because we didn’t spend money on those things. YFYS really shone the light on a little fund achieving good alpha against a passive benchmark that really stands out. 
 
“It’s a function of trying to find good investment ideas rather than worrying about what your peers are doing.” 
 
But it was never really investments that small funds had trouble with. The “sheer cost” of compliance and operations is the real headwind, Artis says, and he thinks that even larger funds that can spread those costs over member bases in the millions are having a hard time keeping up. MIESF could’ve “hung in there” for a few more years, but it didn’t make sense for the fund to keep running on the spot.  
 
“There was so much new regulation coming through in 2025, and there were the requirements coming through for retirement products. MIESF only has two options – MySuper and high growth – and a couple of hundred pensioners. 
 
“In order to meet the requirements APRA was imposing for pension products, going forward, a lot of funds are going to have to grapple with. It was a lot of money that didn’t make sense to spend. It didn’t make sense for the fund to spend a whole lot more money and potentially have to increase the administration fee just to meet the requirements for the next 12 months, only to probably get hit with more requirements in 2026-27.  
 
“You’ve only got two levers; you have to increase your admin fees or pick up new members. You’re not gonna lift a rock and find 50,000 members under it. The board made the right decision.” 
 
But it’s not clear to Artis that the industry, as it’s developed today, is delivering better outcomes. To him, that would require differentiated outcomes; if the whole product suite looks the same then all that’s been achieved is “four or five big players with the same products that just stay in the game” – plus the event risk that comes with that – and an industry that more resembles banking than superannuation in the service it provides.  
 
“When I would talk to the meatworkers who were members, rusted-on members, they saw the value of what they were getting, right? It was the ownership; if you’ve got the history of it then you know it’s there for you because it was created for you. When you’re in a multi-industry fund you’re just one of hundreds of thousands or millions; it becomes a transactional arrangement – just another financial institution providing a service.”  
 
“That’s the issue the industry faces now. It’s spent a lot of money dealing with scale; now it needs to spend a lot of money dealing with service.”