(Pictured: Steve Schubert)
Steve Schubert, one of Australia’s leading actuaries, has made the move into funds management. He has left Mercer after four years as partner and, most recently, leader of strategic client partnerships and future opportunities.
Schubert joined Melbourne-based Cooper Investors last month as chief operating officer. He said: “After 35 years working for companies with thousands of people globally, I’m excited to be working for a firm with less than 40 people.”
Schubert, a popular speaker on the industry conference circuit, joined Mercer from Russell Investments with much fanfare in 2011. He had spent six years at Russell, as managing director of superannuation, and before that established his career at the former Towers Perrin, where he worked for 16 years.
Schubert said he was introduced to the fund manager’s founder, Peter Cooper, by Terry McCredden, the former chief executive of Telstra Super and UniSuper, with whom he had worked to help establish Telstra’s fund in the late 1980s.
“I quickly realised Cooper Investors has parallels to Mercer – both are highly successful organisations with great people – but what particularly attracted me to Mercer in 2011 and now to Cooper Investors was that neither firm is prepared to rest on its laurels,” Schubert said.
“I was surprised that, of its $10 billion under management, Cooper Investors now has approximately $1.5 billion invested globally across 23 countries and 150 stocks. CI’s growth seems to have been an outworking of its success, not an end in itself – they are not asset gatherers – and I liked that.”
He said he was not “about to become an operations expert” because Cooper Investors did not need him for that reason since it had an experience operations team.
“I hope to bring some business management experience from 35 years of working for and advising large organisations,” he said. “Actuaries are trained to look dispassionately at information and facts and chart a course through uncertainty. I think this really aligns with Cooper Investors’ values and investment philosophy. And clients needn’t panic – I’m not about to start picking stocks!”