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(December-2002) Movers and shakers of 2002
Minister for revenue and assistant treasurer Senator Helen Coonan tops Super Review’s list of the Top 10 Most Influential People in Superannuation for 2002.
Last year, being our inaugural listing, our panel had a more historical perspective and voted Paul Keating in as the most influential person in superannuation. He is, after all, considered the principal architect of Australia’s superannuation system and while his legacy is largely historical, what he did still has an impact the daily lives of most people working in the industry today.
This year, however, the panel was more focused on the people who have had the most impact over the last 12 months and while Coonan might not have been considered the most influential person a few months ago, she is now, following the launch of her reform package designed to boost the safety of super. Its impact, if implemented, will be felt by every super fund in the country and could change the way many funds operate. And things are unlikely to ever be the same again if choice-of-funds is introduced.
No doubt many readers will disagree with our listings. From the outset, we knew this could never be a scientific exercise and that the outcome would be subjective. Nonetheless, we hope that the results create debate and make for interesting reading.
Just how one defines influential is also debatable. According to the Australian Concise Oxford Dictionary, a person with influence is one that has an effect or power over another person. For our purposes, we decided that those who are influential are those who have had some kind of impact on the superannuation industry and have helped shape it over the past 12 months.
We were not, however, looking for people who yield power just because they control large funds under management or have important titles. Our panel aimed to eliminate people who were just figureheads of large organisations and looked instead for those they believed were actually pulling strings and whose personal influence was felt through the organisation’s actions.
We started our search by asking 25 people, most of who are themselves already influential and successful in the super industry (see page 15), to nominate three people each who they believed were influential and to state the reasons for their choice. We also asked them to nominate three trustees or fund executives who are seen to be making waves in the superannuation industry (see page 22).
To obtain our final listings, we put all the nominations in front of our panel at a dinner in Sydney one spring evening. Members of the panel included Jean Elborn of the News Ltd Group super funds, Goodman Fielder’s Peter Lambert, Russell Mason of Mercer Human Resource Consulting, Frank Russell’s Stephen Roberts and Blake Dawson Waldron’s Michael Vrisakis.
Our panel faced no easy task. Names were taken off, added again and taken off, as achievements were debated and then compared to other nominees. The long rigorous debate prompted one of our panel members to ask: “Does the jury ever get out of this room?”
At the end of the day, the panel had to make some hard choices. And after coming up with a list of the Top 10 most influential people in super, they had to choose one standout with the most influence. The remaining nine people are listed alphabetically in our tables.
While poor returns were probably the biggest issue that super funds have had to deal with over the past 12 months, it was not Osama Bin Laden, George Bush, communications experts or bubble chasing fund managers that emerged as having influence. Instead, it was players such as Paul Clitheroe — seen as the voice of reason in times of potential panic — that caught our panel’s attention.
It was a repeat performance for Clitheroe, who also appeared in last year’s Top 10 list, as did the SCT’s Graham McDonald, Labor Senator Nick Sherry and ASFA’s Philippa Smith, proving that they have kept up, or even enhanced, the momentum of their impact on the superannuation industry.
And while many super fund executives and trustees were nominated, none made the final Top 10 list. After much debate, the panel concluded that while they were doing an excellent job at their funds and were well known and well respected in the industry, they did not have the overall impact that others on the list had, even if they were heavily involved in industry associations.
Some super fund executives or trustees may be innovative (for example, they may be introducing SRI overlays) and while others in the industry would certainly be interested in what they were doing, the panel believed that they were not necessarily influencing others in the industry to follow suite.
“There are good trustees out there who are doing a magnificent job, but they are not in same league as, say, Philippa Smith… They are not resourced [to have an influence] while Philippa Smith is,” commented one panel member.
The panel also agreed that trustees and fund executives should be focused on their funds and members’ interests, and should not be making an impact on the industry. “I would question a fund executive who is too out there making an impact rather than running his or her fund,” said one panel member. “You could say that that person has too much time on his or her hands.”
“At the end of the day when a trustee starts influencing policy, then he or she should not be trustee. It’s a conflict of interests,” added another.
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