Raphael Arndt
Chief Executive Officer, Future Fund · 3 appearances on the record.
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investorexecutiveengineerfuturefund.gov.au ↗
Dr. Raphael Arndt has spent nearly two decades at Australia's sovereign wealth fund, serving as Head of Infrastructure and Timberland, Chief Investment Officer, and CEO since 2020 while overseeing over A$300 billion. He is recognized in the institutional investment industry for pioneering the total portfolio approach and rethinking traditional asset allocation models.
98statements → 23claims → 11claims resolved → 64%fully supported → 3.82/5average certainty → 2.15/5average debate potential → ≈4.5/5argument clarity, estimated → 7said about them ↓
7 supported 3 partly supported 1 contradicted 2 not yet assessed 10 not checkable as stated how the 23 claims stand · each chip opens the sources
5 predictions · 18 assertions · 12 opinions · 21 insights · 42 disclosures · every statement was checked. The predictions and assertions are the 23 claims: statements the public record can support or contradict. 11 are resolved, 2 are not yet assessed, and 10 name no date, number or outcome precise enough to check. Everything else (opinions, insights, what ifs, disclosures) can never be settled by the record, so it carries no assessment.
The record, in short
What the tape says about how Raphael argues and how the claims held up. Everything they said, and everything said about them, is in the tabs below.
Their most notable supported claim
How they sound: not measured why? →
We measure speaking style by listening to the audio itself, and a fair number needs at least 2,000 words from one person on tape we have measured. There is too little of Raphael Arndt on measured tape to publish a rate. This says nothing about how they speak.
Everything Raphael Arndt said on Capital Allocators that made the record, most notable first. Filter by type, assessment or year in the ledger →
Arndt: Venture capital outperformance is exceptionally persistent compared to other asset classes
“Firstly, our research showed that unlike almost any other asset class, the strongly performing managers tend to be persistent. And I think that's probably due to the fact that the entrepreneurs are attracted to the people who backed the last successful deals a…”
Arndt: Fund-wide fee caps risk cutting out hedge funds, PE, and VC
“Some of our local peers here in superannuation who have to compete for members have decided to go down a road of setting a fee budget for the whole fund. And then reporting those fees as a competitive advantage in their marketing. And we think that risks cutti…”
Future Fund acquired $1B direct stakes in Melbourne and Perth airports
“There was an opportunity in Australia to buy some domestic airports from a listed company, and we wanted to use a manager, but when we started talking to the market, we found that they weren't aligned sufficiently... So we actually went out, surprised the mark…”
Arndt: Mega-funds internalizing asset management will force industry fee compression
“What's happening in infrastructure and properties, the big funds, rather than doing that, they're internalizing, as you pointed out, and that is creating pressure on the industry. And that will force change. And I think the same is true in equities and hedge f…”
Arndt: Sustained Inflation Will Arrive in Recurring Cyclical Waves
“There's many, many reasons why we think inflation will be sustained. It doesn't mean it will stay double digits or high single digits. It will come back down, then it will go up again, then it will come back down, then it will go up again.”
Arndt: Regulated Utilities Are Risky Inflation Hedges Due to Social Contracts
“Certain types of real assets, particularly infrastructure assets, that can pass through inflation look quite attractive, but not, for example, regulated utilities, which you might in theory say should be, because there needs to be a social contract. If you're …”
Future Fund Turned Over Half of Its $200B Portfolio in Three Years
“We manage about two hundred and sixty five billion Aussie across seven funds. The future fund, which is the higher risk fund, is a bit over 200, and we've changed half of it in the last three years.”
Arndt: Passive Trophy Assets Will No Longer Reliably Reward Capital
“We don't think set and forget trophy assets are that exciting, because there's no reason to think that you'll just get rewarded for having capital, and so you need to have strategies that actually create something of worth that people want to pay for”
Future Fund Generated 2.5% Annual Excess Returns Over 18 Years
“When we break down the returns over the life of the fund, 18 years now, we've added about two and a half percent per annum, which we think is pretty good, and it's actually split, interestingly, only about a half a percent to diversification in the traditional…”
Arndt: Traditional Diversification Yielded Significantly Negative Returns Over Three Years
“But if you look over the last three years, actually diversification has been significantly negative because obviously bonds and equities have been correlated in a bad way, but alpha has been really, really strong.”
Arndt: Institutional Macro Inaction Stems From Governance, Not Investment Talent
“Most of the things we think about the world are not secrets. Plenty of people are debating the same issues. It really boils down to, are you willing to act on that? And how far are you willing to move off the back of that? And mostly that's not the capability …”
Future Fund Allocates 20% of Hedge Fund Book to Tail Protection
“So we have a couple of hedge fund strategies that really are sort of volatility traders or tail protection type mandates. And if we had diversified hedge fund portfolio, and if the person running that or the team running that were incentivized just based on th…”
Arndt: Most Funds Rely on Flawed, Backward-Looking Portfolio Construction
“Most funds, I would say, I might not like to think of it this way, but I would say they're quite backward looking in their portfolio construction. What I mean by that is they take this sort of cap M theory and their main variance optimization, and they look at…”
Arndt: Populist Politics Detracts From Economic Growth and Drives Inflation
“And then we're also looking at things like geopolitics trade disputes and things like that, which populist politics in general is usually detractive from economic growth and inflationary.”
Future Fund Manages Zero Assets Internally, Relying on 120 External Managers
“We actually don't manage any assets internally. So we use managers for all of our implementation, and we've probably got about a 120 or so managers on the books at the moment, and would like it not to grow too much more than that, just so that we have the band…”
Arndt: Stock-picking skill is scarce and rapidly arbitraged away by tech
“We don't think that skill is widely available in equity markets today. Technology means that it's being arbitraged away very quickly”
Future Fund Shifted Equity Alpha Pursuit to Market-Neutral Hedge Funds
“Mainly our alpha program has now migrated to long short market neutral hedge funds, because we can pick managers with pure skill, and it's very evident if they have it or not very quickly. We're only paying for the alpha, but secondly, they have very concentra…”
Arndt: Private Equity Leverage Adds LP Risk While Benefiting Managers
“Usually just using more debt gives the LPs more risk and more upside for the manager. But with a lot of downside risk”
Future Fund Never Re-Underwrites Co-Investments, Focusing Strictly on Manager Alignment
“We don't try to re underwrite the deal. We've already underwritten this manager. We've already backed them and we trust them. So our due diligence process will be focused on, is it in their skill set? Firstly, secondly, Is there alignment with the manager? Are…”
Arndt: New funds must build back office before hiring investment staff
“Very wisely made the decision that it was better to build the back office and the custody system and the legal approach first before you start hiring investment people, because, believe it or not, investment people want to start investing straight away.”
Future Fund manages portfolio with 60 investors co-located in Melbourne
“We try to bring those things together by having a small team of 60 investors all in one office here in Melbourne, Australia. And we can all sit in a room and debate things frequently, and we do.”
Future Fund manages risk using a three-year cumulative drawdown to protect taxpayers
“We think about risk in terms of the cumulative drawdown over a three year rolling period, because we think as a public fund, we've got a responsibility to the public and to the taxpayer, and the tolerance for bigger drawdowns over longer timeframes could be te…”
Future Fund Designs Bespoke Mandates Rather Than Buying Off-The-Shelf Strategies
“And rather than buying the vanilla strategy, we typically would design a strategy that suits us. And then if they have one that we can buy off the shelf, that's great. And if not, we can talk to them about building a specific strategy for us.”
Arndt: Future Fund co-investment returns match funds without adverse selection
“We've done probably 20 or 30 co-investments in private equity over the years, so it's not an enormous number, but it's enough to have a view. We also co-invest in the venture portfolio, and we've done about 40 there as well, and so I would say that, broadly sp…”
The other half of the tape: Raphael Arndt's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 7 times in 5 episodes on Capital Allocators. every mention, with the transcript →
Who brings them up most Sam Sicilia 3Ted Seides 2Ashby Monk 1
Every mention by year
tap a year for its mentions
2026 1 mention in 1 episode
2024 1 mention in 1 episode
2023 2 mentions in 2 episodes 1 per episode
2019 3 mentions in 1 episode
Appearances (3)
| Episode | Date | Speaking time |
|---|---|---|
| CIO Greatest Hits: Sovereign Wealth Funds – Raphael Arndt (Australia Future Fund) | Sep 1, 2025 | 1h 8m |
| Raphael Arndt – The Death of Traditional Portfolio Construction? (EP.365) | Jan 29, 2024 | 38m |
| Raphael Arndt – Australia's Sovereign Wealth Fund CIO (Capital Allocators, Episode 70) | Sep 24, 2018 | 1h 9m |