104: State Super's John Livanas

[i3] Institutional Investment Podcast

John Livanas is the Chief Executive Officer of State Super, the $37 billion superannuation fund for public service and public sector workers in NSW. In this episode, we talk about the use of defensive overlays, dealing with the COVID drawdown and machine learning in investments. Enjoy the show! Overview of podcast with John Livanas, Chief Executive Officer of State Super 01:30 Peter Drucker’s book, The Unseen Revolution, provided inspiration to enter the pension fund industry 03:00 We are actually starting to see some of the benefits that Drucker described eventuate here in Australia 07:30 In Australia, every member can actually see their own money in their account. That relationship where you can see where your money is going and see the wealth accumulating creates a more stable system 10:00 On individual risk and financial literacy 12:00 The unique characteristics of State Super 15:00 State Super is unusual; it is probably where most of the funds will be in 10 years’ time. 16:00 We think the biggest decision is setting the investment strategy and then our internal team or TCorp will implement that 18:00 In 2017, we were called the biggest hedge fund in Australia, because we made money on the upside and the downside 19:30 During COVID, our downside protection triggered and that meant we never got into the negative. It is not about anticipating what will happen, but think about how these factors will take place 22:00 Using machine learning in the investment process 24:00 Machine learning didn’t work as well for the Ukraine invasion. That was more a secular relationship. But we did change our portfolio quite significantly 31:00 Machine learning will have a role, but I will still look to people to make the decision 35:00 State Super is not regulated by APRA, but often we look at the policies as if we were 37:00 Active manager do take a little while for that outperformance to come through