The $237 billion Aware Super has appointed former Medibank CRO Greg Gokavi-Whaley to the newly created deputy chief risk officer role as it braces for an increasingly complex risk environment.

Gokavi-Whaley, who started at Aware Super in January 2025, will step into the deputy CRO role from his current position as head of strategy, enablement and enterprise risk management, Investment Magazine can reveal.

“The risk environment for super funds continues to evolve and the establishment of a deputy CRO role further strengthens our enterprise risk leadership and helps us deliver on our operational and strategic priorities,” Jane Couchman, chief risk officer and group executive of sustainability at Aware Super, said in a statement.

“Strong governance and risk management are critical to fulfilling our obligations as the steward of our 1.3 million members’ retirement savings.”

Gokavi-Whaley was CRO of Medibank between 2020 and 2024, overseeing “Medibank’s enterprise risk profile and the organisation’s multi-year risk maturity roadmap”. This means Gokavi-Whaley was with the ASX-listed insurance company when it suffered from the very public cyber breach that saw sensitive medical records of 9.7 million customers compromised. Prior to joining Medibank in 2018 he spent more than 15 years at ANZ in various enterprise roles.

Industry sources told Investment Magazine that the deputy CRO will oversee around four senior leaders of specific risk disciplines within the fund at the head of/general manager level, essentially becoming a new management layer in the risk group.

The fund recently saw the departure of head of business risk and compliance for enablement, transformation and performance, Norlena Brouwer, who jumped ship to insurer Generation Life as its CRO this week.

It’s unusual for super funds to have a deputy position to the CRO, which is more common o in large banks and insurers where the need for risk oversight is greater and more complicated.

These sectors are also a ripe hunting ground for super funds. Cbus CRO Martha Georgiou is a banking risk stalwart, having held senior product and regulatory risk roles in NAB and Westpac for more than a decade before joining the fund in June 2024.

The appointment is a sign that super funds are increasingly looking to expand their risk departments in the face of growing investment, regulatory, technology and product risk, as a result of the complexity that comes with allocating massive amounts of capital globally and addressing increasing member needs as they approach retirement.

It’s a period of change at Aware Super as the fund also rejigged its investment team structure following the merger with TelstraSuper.

The appointment is effective from 29 June.