Having served 25 years with Australian Catholic Superannuation and Retirement Fund (Australian Catholic Superannuation), CEO Greg Cantor is incredibly passionate about the sector. With a background in accounting, he started working as the finance manager for the Catholic Education Office in Sydney in 1989, while also looking after the secretarial side of the superannuation fund.
Five years later, he approached the chief executive of the office, Brother Kelvin Canavan, and said that he could no longer do both roles. ”So he asked me, ’Which would you prefer?'” Greg recalls. “I had been an accountant since I started my career, and I thought superannuation might give me some new challenges. When I initially joined the business, the superannuation fund was $80 million in size and today it is at nearly $7 billion.”
In 1992, the Keating Labor government introduced a compulsory superannuation scheme as part of a major reform package for retirement income policies. Then in 1994, superannuation funds incorporated, setting a change in motion for the entire industry. Greg says it kicked off a consolidation process for the business which has, since 1995, undergone 13 mergers with other smaller Catholic-related funds around Australia. Government legislative and regulatory changes have kept Greg on his toes, and he foresees that this will continue in the years to come as the baby boomer generation enters retirement and the industry becomes even more relevant.