About My Work
Thirty years bridging institutional investing and wealth innovation.
Who I am, how I think about wealth, my career, and selected outcomes.
Who I am, how I think about wealth, my career, and selected outcomes.
There are CIOs who understand alternative investments. And there are wealth-management executives who understand distribution. Global leaders who have built both, at institutional scale, and then gone on to design the digital advice infrastructure that makes it accessible to investors at every level, are rare.
I spent fifteen years at Macquarie, Australia's premier investment bank, building and running a US$10 billion alternatives platform across fourteen countries. The last thirteen I have devoted to building fintech platforms, digital advice engines, and regulated investment products from the ground up.
What connects those years is one capability: I am a translator. Deep investment knowledge, combined with a genuine understanding of advisers and investors at every level, becomes the product, the framework and the language that makes sophisticated investing accessible.
That's my expertise, and my passion.
Global perspectives and experience operating across five continents is my key differentiator.
I've managed billions in assets and led global teams across five continents, adapting complex investment products for 14+ jurisdictions. My experience includes running Macquarie New Zealand, launching Macquarie Wealth in Canada, building US feeder funds, adapting European institutional investments for Asian UHNWIs, and leading the Macquarie team in India.
Connecting thirty diverse years in financial services with one core capability: translation.
I translate complex investment ideas, structures, and products across asset classes, investor types, and jurisdictions. From institutional alternatives to retail-accessible vehicles, from Australian regulatory frameworks to US and Asian markets, I bridge the gap between what sophisticated investors build and what advisers and their clients can access. That translation is how capital moves.
I am a builder, harnessing deep investments expertise to engineer winning products.
Decades of financial engineering experience across all investment asset classes, with an alternatives specialisation. I built and ran a US$10 billion alternatives platform at Macquarie. I engineered Australia's industry-standard framework for alternative investment distribution to retail and HNW wealth clients, built a world-first SMA angel investment club, and founded multiple licensed fintech and digital advice businesses.
I am a blue ocean strategist. I create new categories, not new products.
As Macquarie's Chief Innovation Officer and Chief Investment Officer, I crafted ideas that created new categories. Most recently I built a personal financial digital advice engine with foundational AI at the heart, cutting adviser time from hours to minutes, and launched a new real asset category giving sophisticated investors access to a highly diversified equine breeding fund.
From strategy through execution, I transform complex ideas into commercial outcomes.
I think at the macro level, identifying opportunities and unlocking commercial potential with thoughtfully crafted strategies. I am comfortable with ambiguity, and practiced at grounding complexity into clear decisions that move capital. I lead from in front, but you will always find me working alongside the team, rolling up my sleeves to execute successfully.
My Adviser Empowerment Framework: make them money, make them look good, make it easy.
Empowering financial advisers with the products, access, tools, language and confidence to win and keep clients is an art. It starts with understanding that every adviser is running a business built around one thing: helping their clients succeed. I build with their goals, pain points and fears in mind. I have decades of evidence across asset classes and geographies that this framework works.
I always lead with the team, investors and shareholders front of mind.
At Macquarie I led a team of 100+ financial product innovators who defied the odds, growing revenues by 26% through the Global Financial Crisis by placing the investor at the heart of every decision and leaning into the hard conversations. I have led brokers, wealth advisers, product innovators, BDMs and customer service teams across a multinational investment bank, bonds businesses, a life sciences venture capital firm, and a female-focused fintech social enterprise.
The world's most successful endowment funds, sovereign wealth funds, and major pension programs all share a single strategy: they heavily allocate to alternative assets that traditional wealth managers rarely touch. Private equity, private credit, real assets, and venture capital aren't exotic novelties. They are the structural bedrock of long-term wealth creation.
True portfolio construction principles don't change just because an account is smaller. The only real variables are access, liquidity, and visibility. My career has been dedicated to bridging this divide, building the regulatory and structural pathways that bring institutional-grade wealth creation to individual investors.
"For three decades, I've championed the idea that the 'endowment investment model' belongs in the broader market."
For long-term investors, the illiquidity premium is compensation. Securing this reliable return premium is a cornerstone of intelligent portfolio construction.
Alternatives are sold, not bought. My expertise is translating institutional concepts into the language, framework, and confidence advisers require for successful product distribution.
True diversification requires structural independence from the equity and bond cycle. Alternatives that reprice with public markets are not alternatives.
Suitability logic and regulatory documentation must be engineered into the product from Day One, not bolted on later. With experience adapting products across jurisdictions, I always start with the end in mind.
Driving growth at the intersection of institutional investing and wealth innovation.
I joined Macquarie in my twenties as a financial engineer and progressed over fifteen years to Global Chief Investment Officer and Chief Innovation Officer, an Executive Committee member leading a 120-person team across fourteen countries.
I built and ran a US$10 billion alternatives platform spanning agricultural, infrastructure, structured credit, private equity and direct investments. I raised US$2.8 billion via financial advisers and secured institutional capital from the Gates and Buffett family office (Cascade) and Dutch pension fund APG.
I also managed US$6 billion in GFC-impacted client assets to resolution, with zero financial penalties and zero regulatory proceedings.
Platform for operating CIO and board roles inside alternative investment businesses at inflection points. Since 2013, engagements have collectively involved more than US$800M in capital formation, product structuring, or assets under advice.
Impact fund investing in food, energy, health, water, and waste. Designed the fund architecture and shaped the capital formation strategy from scratch.
Life sciences and deep tech venture capital, backing Australia's brightest university founders.
Australia's first fully licensed digital personal advice platform. ~4,500 compliant advice statements at under US$1 each, and an estimated ~US$300M in member fee savings.
Led governance of a business-model transformation from a cash-only deposit platform to a full credit and capital markets business generating 95% of revenue from those segments within three years.
Delivered 108% revenue growth in year one and grew offshore revenue from under 2% to 55% of total. Repositioned credit research around conviction-based investment themes.
A fuller explanation of Craig's roles, board seats and credentials is on LinkedIn.
Download executive profileDesigned and launched a wholesale diversified equine breeding fund from scratch, creating a new agricultural asset class. Genuine illiquidity premium with return drivers entirely uncorrelated to equity or credit markets. Product structure and adviser education materials overcame first-timer hesitancy and enabled rapid allocation.
Four simultaneous levers: shifted to global corporate bonds (55% offshore revenue by month 12); repositioned content from education to conviction-based investment themes advisers could deploy with clients; realigned remuneration to client outcomes; introduced transparent pricing. Remuneration strategy formally recognised by ASIC as best-practice.
When I joined the Income Asset Management board it was a cash-only deposit platform. Led strategic governance of complete business model transformation into a full fixed income and capital markets business. Recruited CEO and Head of Corporate Bonds; governed remuneration restructure, product rollout, research function redesign, and corporate loan business launch.
Selected as workout manager for approximately A$7 billion in non-performing Macquarie products established prior to the GFC, managed alongside primary Global-CIO responsibilities. The mandate: protect the Group from financial and legal consequences while delivering equitable outcomes to investors. Resolved every position without Group financial penalties or legal proceedings.
Built complete personal advice architecture under ASIC's most demanding regulatory framework, including suitability assessment logic, documented investment rationale, portfolio construction rules, and compliance output documentation for retail investors. The blueprint for compressing adviser discovery from three hours to five minutes with compliance-grade output.
Developed Macquarie's structured framework for alternative investment distribution to retail and HNW wealth clients, covering product structuring for retail accessibility, adviser training and language development, client suitability and risk profiling for illiquid products, and compliance documentation. Adapted across fourteen countries with different regulatory, tax, and investor sophistication profiles.
From 2004 until I left in 2013, I chaired the Group-wide Alternative Assets Forum, the committee that approved or declined every private-asset product sold anywhere in the world through retail, HNWI and sub-US$50 million institutional channels, with representation from each operating group plus central risk and finance.
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