Value proposition

“We’re here to do a very simple thing, and that is to try to build a planet that’s worth retiring into,” says 40-year-old Simon Sheikh.

- CHRISTOPHER NIESCHE

With 415,000 members and $13.9 billion in funds under management, Future Super doesn’t invest in fossil fuels and aims instead to drive social impact with its investments, which Sheikh says can also deliver strong risk-adjusted returns.

Sheikh grew up in Sydney as the primary carer for his mother, who had a mental illness, and for his father, who had had a heart attack. Both parents were still grieving the loss of a daughter before he was born.

Money was tight. He grew up in public housing and was the beneficiary of “the amazing social safety net in this country” that allowed him to attend primary school, albeit a socioeconomically disadvantaged school.

“Even though I grew up in a situation where we were living day-to-day off government welfare cheques, my parents were quite thrifty and didn’t gamble or drink alcohol or smoke cigarettes,” he says. “I had a minimum level of comfort. That meant that I was already ahead. We had a little bit of money left over at the end of each week for private tuition.”

His parents placed a high value on education. His father had done his homework under the only working street light in his neighbourhood in Pakistan and ultimately won a scholarship to come to Australia. The private tuition – which his father paid for by taking on extra work – led to a spot at the Fort Street selective high school in Sydney.

For the first time, Sheikh came across students from middle class backgrounds, who always had full school uniforms, and saw how disparate outcomes were for different people. “I started to learn some early lessons about money through actually experiencing and witnessing what income inequality was doing for people and to people,” he says.

The early years