Incolink

Erik Locke is the CEO of Incolink, with overall responsibility for the fund's investment strategy and operations. The investment function reports to a board composed equally of union and employer-association representatives — a governance structure built into the fund's trust deed. Daily portfolio management is executed by an internal investment team, with external managers engaged for specialist asset classes such as direct infrastructure and structured credit. Specific investment committee members are not publicly disclosed.

Incolink sources construction-sector exposures through relationships with Australian superannuation funds, infrastructure managers, and property developers. The fund participates in club-style co-investments alongside IFM Investors and Cbus Super in Australian infrastructure placements (per Australian Financial Review, 2021). For private credit, deal flow originates from mid-market construction firms and asset-backed lending intermediaries operating within the Australian building ecosystem. The fund's union-employer governance model also creates a proprietary network within the construction industry that surfaces off-market property and lending opportunities.

Incolink is a closed, industry-specific fund that manages portable entitlements exclusively for workers and employers in the Australian building and construction industry. It does not accept external institutional or retail capital. The scheme operates across Victoria and Tasmania, with reciprocal arrangements that allow workers to maintain continuity of entitlements when moving between participating employers in those states. The model is closest to a multi-employer not-for-profit insurance trust, governed under Australian trust and superannuation law.

Incolink's investment posture is shaped by a counter-cyclical liability structure: redundancy claims rise during construction downturns, precisely when capital markets are contracting. This requires the fund to hold deep liquidity reserves — typically through cash, short-duration fixed income, and liquid infrastructure positions — while deploying longer-duration capital into direct property and private credit that match the longer tail of long-service-leave accruals. The fund has historically been a net seller of liquid assets during construction contractions and a net accumulator during expansions, creating an investment rhythm that differs from growth-composite benchmarks used by conventional superannuation pools.

Incolink's investment policy prohibits exposure to sectors that conflict with the health and safety mission of its member base, including tobacco, controversial weapons, and companies with systemic workplace-safety violations in the construction industry. The fund's negative screening framework is maintained by its responsible-investment committee, which reports to the bipartite board. Detailed exclusion lists are not published, though the overarching principles are stated in the fund's annual communications. The screening posture aligns with the environmental, social, and governance (ESG) frameworks used by Australian industry superannuation funds.

Incolink and Cbus Super are separate legal entities with distinct mandates — Incolink manages portable redundancy and long-service-leave entitlements, while Cbus Super is a regulated superannuation fund for the construction and building industry. Both organizations share governance roots in the Australian union-employer bipartite model and invest from a common pool of Australian construction-worker capital, but their investment strategies differ. Incolink prioritizes income and liquidity to match short-to-medium-term redundancy claims; Cbus Super pursues long-horizon growth for retirement savings. The two entities co-invest selectively, as seen in the November 2023 build-to-rent housing initiative where Incolink contributed land and Cbus provided development capital (per the firm, November 2023).

Yes — Incolink operates a health and wellbeing program, a suicide-prevention initiative, and a training arm for construction workers, all funded through levy income rather than investment returns. These programs are structurally separated from the investment portfolio through the fund's operational budget, which allocates a defined portion of employer-levy income to non-investment activities. The separation ensures that member entitlement balances are not used to subsidize ancillary programs, a governance safeguard embedded in Incolink's trust deed and overseen by the bipartite board.