BROAD STROKES

With around two decades under her belt, Mary Delahunty is focused on the big picture for the future of superannuation. Eliza Bavin writes.

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A career in superannuation came completely by accident for Mary Delahunty, but it was the best accident she could have hoped for.

Long before fate would take her hand, Delahunty was growing up in country Victoria as the youngest of seven children and was sent to boarding school in Melbourne before embarking on an arts degree at university.

“Nobody, especially at that time, came out of university and said, ‘I really want to work in super’. It was very opaque, and people didn’t really know what it was, and still I think that’s something for us to change,” Delahunty says.

Straight out of university Delahunty fell into a job at Link Market Services (now MUFG), where over the course of a decade she was able to work within different departments of the business and gain valuable knowledge of the industry she would come to represent.

“We used to look after listed entities, their AGMs, their buybacks, any sort of share register movement. And it was genuinely fun. It was a bit wild west, but I thought it was so interesting,” she says.

“When I came back from maternity leave, the chief executive at the time said they were looking at purchasing a superannuation administration business. And his words to me were something to the effect of, ‘It’s pretty much the same as looking after listed companies’, and he asked if I would be interested in going over to the super side.”

Despite quickly realising it was not at all like looking after listed companies, Delahunty was very glad she said yes and took on the challenge.

“It was a new world to enter, culturally different, service-wise different, and so challenging, but really rewarding when you got it right. And that’s what I think is the continuing theme of super. And anyone who works in super will say the same kind of thing,” she says.