The Investment Magazine 2025 Salary Survey shows that the annual salaries paid to chairs of super funds now average around $140,000, though a good number are paid less than $100,000 a year.  
 
At the top of the range was Greg Cooper, who was paid more than $420,000 (up from $352,000 in last year’s survey) but whose responsibilities cover multiple entities within the Colonial First State Group; and more than $350,000 (up from $337,000 last year) for AustralianSuper chair Don Russell, who leads a board that governs a fund that was entangled in legal action with ASIC over its death benefit claims handling, was fined for failing to address duplicate member accounts and which currently faces the task of replacing its long-standing chief investment officer Mark Delaney (Russell declined to be interviewed for this article). 
 
Other big-fund chairs who received notable total-rem bumps in the 2024-25 financial year include UniSuper’s Mark Armour ($284,714 versus $278,406), and Hostplus’ Damien Frawley ($283,901 versus $227,313).

Even so, the salaries of the chairs of some of the nation’s largest funds remain relatively low – compared to CIOs and CEOs, at least – belying the fact that super boards can be complex beasts to govern, and being chair is no longer a responsibility that can be adequately discharged with the commitment of a few hours a month. 
 
The largest board – the post-merger Team Super – has 18 directors, and in the relevant period also had joint chairs. The largest fund in the country, the $405 billion AustralianSuper, has 12 directors – a sizeable board, but still smaller than funds such as HESTA, Cbus and CareSuper. 
 
As deputy chair of the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority, Helen Rowell made no apologies for piling pressure on super funds to better serve the interests of their member. 
 
But today, as chair of the $350 billion Australian Retirement Trust, Rowell says she has a slightly different understanding of what it takes to govern a large, modern superannuation fund, and why change takes longer than many people would like. 
 
“Dare I say, I have a little bit more sympathy for chairs and boards, perhaps than I did as the regulator – just a little bit – because of the challenges [they are facing],” she tells Investment Magazine. 
 
“Regulators want funds to just kind of get on and do stuff and do it now and do it quickly and get to where they want [them] to be. I appreciate more, I think, some of the complexities and challenges and trade-offs and decisions that need to be made, just given the scale of change that funds are dealing with, both in the market, in their membership, digital evolution, regulatory change, all of those things; and you’re trying to juggle all that in a way that meets everyone’s expectations.” 
 
Rowell’s experience underlines how complex superannuation funds have become, and the expanded demands placed on those who govern them. And she’s not alone in finding governing a superannuation fund to be different from the other roles outside the sector. 
 
James Merlino, former Deputy Premier of Victoria, joined the $105 billion Rest Super as an independent director and chair on 1 January 2023. Freed from the relentless short-term political and news cycles, he now finds himself in a role where “the time horizon is very different”. 
 
“Particularly for a fund like Rest, we’ve got a million members under 30. For many of our members, they’ll be retiring in 40 or 50 years,” Merlino tells Investment Magazine. 
“It’s quite incredible when you think about it. You’ve got to balance the short term, including markets, with long-term settings, organisational settings that that set our members up for that long-term horizon. 
 
“I’ve got an infrastructure role with Suburban Rail Loop [Authority] Victoria. That’s a long-term project, but still, construction is happening now. I’ve got an education role [Victorian Catholic Education Authority], and that’s long-term, but it’s also about your student outcomes now. So that that long term [superannuation] horizon of 20, 30, 40, 50 years sets it apart from a lot of other things that that I do, or other chairs do.” 
 
Christine McLouglin, chair of the $206 billion Aware Super,  says the compulsory nature of super contributions and the level of trust that members place in their funds “creates additional obligations on the chair and the whole organisation” that do not apply to the same extent outside the sector. 
 
“Every decision, every investment, every operational choice must withstand the test: are we acting in members’ best financial interests?” McLoughlin tells Investment Magazine. 
 
“There is more than $4 trillion in super and 79 per cent of Australians have at least one superannuation account, with varying levels of understanding of this complex system.  
 
“I would also note that the Financial Accountability Regime now applies to super funds and that we can learn from the experience of boards in banking and insurance in this context.” 
 
While chair of the board is not a full-time role – the strength of many chairs is the wealth of outside experience they bring to the table – it is not an undertaking to be treated lightly, either. Long-gone are the days of chair appointments as sinecures for “friends of the fund”.  
 
Merlino says he commits “a significant” amount of time to the role. 
 
“I was drinking from the fire hydrant and I made a deliberate decision at the very beginning to not only chair the board but [also] be a member of every committee. It was a deliberate move to over the first 12 to 18 months to get my head firmly across all aspects of the business.  
 
“I’ve now reduced that, I jumped off a couple of committees, but I’m still active in three of them, and it’s important. It’s important for the chair and for all directors that across all of the committees and the working groups that are part of the business you’ve got directors on each of those [who] then bring that knowledge through to board discussions. It’s a big commitment. But as I said, it goes back to this is a serious business. This is a serious undertaking, and you’ve got to put that effort in.” 
 
Rowell says that a director joining the ART board can generally expect to be asked to commit at least a day and a half a week, and possibly more, to their fund-specific responsibilities. Rowell’s own role takes up more time than that. 
 
“We expect all of our directors to be on at least one, if not two committees,” she says. 
“As a chair, I’m only two months into the into the role… but I think it is going to be at least a two, two-and-a-half, maybe even three-day-a-week job.  
 
“It is substantial if you’re going to do it well, because it’s not just the board meetings and the committee meetings, there’s all the prep, and then there’s all the things that happen in between, and particularly as a chair you’re really working with the CEO on a lot of the stakeholder engagement. So that means a lot of meetings, and other things that happen outside of committees and board.” 
 
As superannuation funds become larger and inevitably attract the public, political and regulatory scrutiny that comes with directing the investment of $4.5 trillion, the interplay between the funds’ chairs, CEOs and CIOs has also become more nuanced. 
 
Rowell says the complexity of funds is “quite different to what it was 10 or 15 years ago, in terms of diversity of membership, the expectations around service and benefits, and what members are looking for, what other stakeholders expect”. 
 
“Certainly within super, I think to a degree chairs have had to get a little bit more involved and engaged,” she says. 
 
“The partnership, I’m going to call it,… between the chair and the CEO is critically important because of the complexity and the prioritisation and the decision making that needs to happen.  
 
“There’s an interesting kind of balance that needs to be struck between holding the chair accountable for execution but also being there as a trusted source of advice and guidance and helping the CEO navigate some of the issues and challenges that come up over time.” 
 
Aware’s McLoughlin says the chair’s role is “very much one of stewardship”. 
 
“A deep understanding of fiduciary duties and the complex regulatory environment is essential. It is the role of the CEO to lead the organisation, while the chair and the Board bring strong governance oversight around strategy, culture and performance.” 
McLoughlin says “it has always been critical that the chair ‘bring the outside in’”. 
 
“This is particularly so as technology gallops ahead and our organisations embrace it to deliver better member outcomes and improve productivity,” she says. 
 
“The chair and the board are also custodians of the organisation’s reputation – and this is vital to maintaining the trust of all stakeholders.” 
 
Merlino says the chair, CEO and CIO roles are all “more and more an outward facing role in different ways for the three of us”.  
 
“That ability to engage with the political class, with the policymakers, is critically important,” he says. 
 
“That’s a skill-set that that I bring to the table in terms of how governments work, how decisions are made, what’s the best way of advocating a position of Rest on behalf of its members. 
 
“We’ll go regularly to Canberra, talk to the government, talk to the opposition, talk to the cross bench about issues and reforms that we we’re pursuing on behalf of our members. That is a part of the changing role as we’re more impactful. If there’s a significant public discussion on the economy, on tax, superannuation is around that table.” 
 
Merlino says he is reminded constantly of the gravitas of the role.  
 
“Superannuation is an economic miracle in this country. It’s the envy of nations around the world,” he says. 
 
“It’s a massive driver of our national prosperity, and so all of those things put together, you get a sense that, ‘I can’t stuff this up’; you know, this is serious business for the individual member and the dignity of their retirement and their financial security and then the significance to the economy.”