GESB chief executive Ben Palmer has kept a relatively low profile during the more than 13 years he’s worked at the super fund for Western Australian state employees. Part of the reason is geography: with almost its entire workforce based in Perth, the $46 billion fund is a long way from its east coast super peers. But its structure also sets it apart; a statutory entity of the WA state government, GESB operates outside of APRA regulation and has its own operating nuances.

That position shifted recently with the completion of GESB’s One Fund migration, which has brought it in line with the national stapling regime. Western Australian state workers who leave their roles can now stay with GESB and direct non-government employer contributions to it, although eligibility to join the fund still requires public sector employment.

The operationally and politically complex project stands as Palmer’s defining achievement at the fund. As he prepares to exit the top job at GESB for a private sector investment role at the end of this week, Palmer tells Investment Magazine in a rare interview that funds like GESB need “to work harder to tell [their] story” and that it believes retail funds and platforms are setting the standard for member experience.

“I’ve said for a number of years – and I say this with no disrespect – that the profit-to- member funds aren’t the benchmarks. For a number of years now, the resurgence in the platforms and the retail side is really the benchmark we should be focusing on,” he says.

“The key opportunity industry-wide – and challenges – are going to clearly be the evolution of member experience and service, and systems capability and delivery of experience and service, and that’s a really dynamic thing.”

The rise of platforms has been highlighted in the 2026 State of Super report from the Conexus Institute*. While profit-to-member funds including AustralianSuper, HESTA, Rest and Cbus are all experiencing “slippage”, large advice platforms including AMP North, BT, CFS Edge, HUB24, IOOF (Insignia), Macquarie Super, Netwealth are winning flows.

Palmer says it’s unsustainable for super funds to continue to operate in the “past regime of default”.

“If you’re an employer and someone joins your employment, and you create an account default… what on earth are you doing?” he says.

“The default only as a last resort sort is something that applies to all funds now, and it’s a first principle… [Fund] sustainability is ultimately best served by confidence in new members joining the fund, doing a great job of retaining them through good service, good products, good experience, good investment performance, and ultimately helping them remain a member through the retirement phase.”

The One Fund marks a big mindset shift for GESB, Palmer says.

“We fly below the radar quite a lot and have for a number of years. But it’s important that we tell our story to members and prospective members and [give them] the information they need to make an informed choice around where they want to put their retirement savings.”

‘Progressive’ history

Palmer joined GESB in 2012 as a senior investment strategist. Hailing from global asset manager Schroders in London, where he held several senior investment positions, Palmer says GESB didn’t feel like a slow-moving machine as one might expect from a public sector fund.

The fund’s investment strategy has always been “progressive”, with a more liquid portfolio than its peers due to the need to fulfill state guaranteed benefit payments. In 2012, GESB began building a dynamic asset allocation program, or what it then called a “medium-term asset allocation”.

“It’s interesting, because a lot of the work I do in Schroders was moving away from the Brinson type of portfolio management… to risk budgeting and allocating parcels of portfolio risk to different ideas, themes, exposures, strategies etc.,” he says.

But GESB is much more rooted in the Brinson-styled analysis, a classical model of performance attribution which generally divides portfolio returns into the effects of allocation and selection.

“[We were] really breaking down where we’re taking departures from the [SAA] benchmark position, and ensuring those are all intended, quantified, risk-assessed, understood and intentional. There are a lot of rigour around how much of our risk budget we want to put into active asset allocation versus manager selection,” Palmer says.

“There were a lot of enhancements made in understanding the active risk budget and really measuring the attribution and impacts of those different levers and decisions.

“The CIO now has to manage asset allocation and cash flows, so I think that whole process lent itself to really clear and strong comfort for our board and investment committee to have in the degrees of freedom that the CIO has.”

Stepping up

Organisationally, GESB also went through a big change process. The WA government considered the idea of mutualising GESB but eventually abandoned the plan in 2010 due to the prospect that it would require raising fees for members. A government review at the time instead introduced the ability for public workers to nominate other funds for their super to be paid into, thrusting GESB into the choice landscape.

Another recommendation in the 2010 review was that GESB outsource its administration services, and in 2014 Link Group (now MUFG Pension & Market Services) was selected as the provider. As a result, Palmer recalls that within the first 18 months of his tenure the organisational headcount was reduced from 240 to 40.

Palmer led the investment team between 2014 and 2019, leading an intentional pivot to what he calls “a whole of portfolio lens” to managing rebalancing and cash flows with the aim of reducing portfolio turnovers significantly.

It was also during this time that Palmer began his 17-month period as the acting chief executive, before he was substantially appointed in July 2018.

“It’s not that you’re in a holding pattern by any stretch, but in an acting capacity, sometimes you don’t feel like you have the full long-term mandate to influence and make changes,” he concedes. “I think that duration of the acting period was probably unforeseen at the time.”

“In reflection, probably if I had my time again, I’d back myself to have more of a mandate at that point.”

No public offer

But looking back at his time at GESB, Palmer says the One Fund migration, which was completed in May last year, was definitively his greatest achievement, and possibly also the most significant change in the 85-year history of WA superannuation. Since its introduction, more than 4500 members have already directed non-government employer contributions into GESB.

The reform was complex politically as it needed a legislative change and endorsement from the WA state government, and that process was carried through the tenures of two GESB board chairs and a number of directors.

The actual execution also required some hard work from MUFG Pension & Market Services and insurer AIA – the fund is required to provide insurance products for all WA public sector employees, which includes some high-risk professions like police and prison officers and transport workers.

“A lot of thought went into how [One Fund] impacts our insurance policy settings and processes with now having non-government employers paying contributions into the fund and having former public sector workers as active contributing members outside government employment,” Palmer says.

But Palmer says this alignment with stapling is not a “trajectory of public offer”. In fact, he doubts that it will ever happen as it would require GESB becoming an APRA-regulated fund and a policy change in WA.

“We’ve got a defined benefit scheme still, which is closed, but still an operating scheme with – an increasingly mature – tail of membership in it. And we’ve still got untaxed accumulation, which again is closed to new membership, but with a fairly long tail of runoff,” he says.

“It’s simply aligning – as we as we commit to do under its Heads of [Government] Agreement – benefits and contribution types with the national standards… it shouldn’t in any way be looked at as broadening or moving into public offer.”

Giving a parting word of advice to his replacement, Palmer says, “it’s critically important that GESB’s idiosyncrasies and nuances are really understood and respected”. Chief investment officer Paul Taylor will step up as the interim CEO while a replacement search takes place.

“There’s not a huge amount of people who’ve been CEO of GESB over the 85-odd years of history, and it’s a very privileged cohort to be part of,” he says.

“We’re in a great position of trust in the public sector here in WA and that’s really wonderful and much appreciated. But I think it’s a testament to the way people here have gone about their jobs in our business for a decade or more.

“Everyone’s got values and principles, but [being] member-first has always been our overarching primary value.

“I think it served us really well so I’m really proud of the team here.”

*The Conexus Institute is a not-for-profit think tank philanthropically funded by Conexus Financial, publisher of Investment Magazine.