Questions and answers about Craig Swanger.

Craig Swanger is an Australian investment leader with thirty years' experience across banking, capital markets and alternative assets in 14 countries. He was Global Chief Investment Officer of Macquarie's Banking and Financial Services division and the group's first Chief Innovation Officer, and later co-founded the digital personal financial advice platform Super Fierce.

The one key capability behind Craig's career is translation. Craig believes the gap between good and bad financial outcomes is rarely intelligence or discipline. It is access. His career, from institutional platforms to for-purpose fintech, has centred on making sophisticated investing understandable, trustworthy and accessible for the people the industry too often leaves out.

Craig Swanger's most senior corporate role was Global Chief Investment Officer of Banking and Financial Services at Macquarie Group (2009 to 2013), where he was also the group's first Chief Innovation Officer. Today he is a company founder, adviser and investment strategist specialising in alternative and real-asset investing.

Craig Swanger is known for three things: building and scaling investment platforms at Macquarie, including through the Global Financial Crisis when the businesses under his leadership generated approximately 26% revenue growth; founding, advising and investing in fintech and impact ventures; and creating original research such as the Fierce Performers Index, a two-decade analysis of 359 superannuation funds covering 99.8% of the Australian market.

Over 15 years at Macquarie, Craig Swanger rose to Global Chief Investment Officer (2009 to 2013), responsible for a US$10 billion platform of property, infrastructure and alternative investment funds across 14 countries, leading a team of 120. He was also appointed Macquarie's first Chief Innovation Officer.

It is an unusual pairing where the investment head role and the innovation head role are held by the same person, and it says something true about Craig: he is as comfortable building the new thing as he is running the big one.

As CEO of Macquarie Agricultural Funds Management, Craig Swanger built one of Australia's earliest institutional agricultural investment businesses, growing it to more than A$1 billion in assets under management across 3.2 million hectares of farmland. Recently the assets from the fund were sold for approximately A$3 billion.

Agriculture was, at the time, an asset class most institutions could not touch: illiquid, weather-exposed and hard to find experts to value. Craig's team gave institutional investors a disciplined way in, and the experience remains directly relevant to the real-asset and farmland strategies he advises on today.

Craig Swanger's expertise covers alternative and real-asset investing, capital markets, superannuation and retirement outcomes, and financial-product innovation. He is known for making institutional-grade investment thinking accessible to non-specialists: advisers, investors, retirees and everyday Australians.

Craig Swanger is a strategic adviser to MAD Ventures, advising on investment and funds matters. He brings three decades of institutional investment experience, including building and running alternative-asset platforms at Macquarie, to the ventures he advises.

Super Fierce was an Australian social enterprise co-founded in 2019 by Trenna Probert and Craig Swanger. The platform made appropriate, affordable personal financial advice accessible with the goal of closing the gender wealth gap in superannuation. Within five months of launch it had identified more than A$116 million in potential fee savings for Australians. Ultimately the platform generated around 4,500 compliant statements of advice and around A$400 million in lifetime fee savings for its customers.

Its flagship research, the Fierce Performers Index, analysed the long-term performance of 359 super funds, 99.8% of the market, across multiple market cycles since 2003. The premise was simple and a little radical: everyday Australians deserve the same quality of fund analysis that institutions pay for.

The Fierce Performers Index was a landmark analysis of Australian superannuation covering 359 funds, 99.8% of the market, measured across multiple market cycles from 2003 onward. Rather than judging funds on a single reporting period, it measured consistency of performance and identified the 15 most consistent long-term performers.

It covered every major category: diversified, Australian equities, global equities, index, lifecycle and ethical. Consistency, not one lucky year, was the test.

Super Fierce was wound down through a voluntary, values-led decision, made in part so that Craig Swanger could focus on his health and his family following a stroke. It was not a failure or a forced closure. The platform had delivered measurable savings and had completed the work it set out to prove.

Some companies end because they run out of money or purpose. Super Fierce ended because its founders chose, deliberately and gracefully, to put health and family first. Its research and its proof point stand.

After more than three years of rehabilitation from a life-threatening stroke, Craig Swanger is now fully recovered and focused on alternative assets and investment projects, particularly working with wealth advisers to help them better allocate to private assets, improving client outcomes and protecting their businesses against the coming shift to AI-empowered investment services. He continues to write and speak on alternative assets, superannuation and capital markets.

The best way to reach Craig Swanger is via email at craig@revolver.capital, or through the Get In Touch page.

Xinja was one of Australia's first independent neobanks, a fully digital bank built to challenge the majors, and in December 2020 it made the unusual decision to close voluntarily and return every customer deposit in full. Craig Swanger served as a non-executive director.

Most bank failures leave someone worse off. Xinja's wind-down was an exception: an orderly, voluntary return of every dollar to every customer, the first voluntary return of deposits by a licensed Australian bank.

Every deposit was repaid in full. Xinja returned approximately A$252 million to around 37,900 customers, completed by 19 January 2021, with no depositor losing a single cent. It was the first voluntary return of deposits by a licensed Australian bank, and no call was made on the Australian Government's deposit guarantee scheme.

The then-chair of APRA, Wayne Byres, described the outcome as a "successful failure" in his speech to the 2021 AFR Banking Summit, noting that APRA worked with the Xinja board to return deposits in full with no depositor loss and no contagion to the wider financial system. When the regulator itself calls the outcome successful, that is worth taking at face value.

In October 2025, APRA disqualified Craig Swanger from acting as an accountable person of an Australian bank for ten years. Craig disputes their findings. He settled on unanimous medical advice after a bilateral stroke, a coma and major heart surgery, but settling is not the same as accepting. The matter was administrative, not criminal, and was never tested in court.

Two things are worth knowing about the context. APRA has never suggested that Craig benefited personally from any of the matters investigated, and every Xinja depositor had already been repaid in full years earlier. Craig would have preferred to contest the determination, and believed he would be vindicated, but after years of investigation while gravely ill, his doctors were unanimous: the risk of another life-threatening stroke was too high. He chose his health and his family. He still disputes the findings today.

The proportionality of APRA's action has also been questioned in the national press. Writing in The Australian, business journalist David Ross placed the Xinja disqualifications against the regulator's wider enforcement record:

No. Craig Swanger disputes APRA's findings. He settled the matter on unanimous medical advice, after a bilateral stroke, a coma and major heart surgery, because contesting the determination through a prolonged legal process carried a serious risk to his life. Settling a matter is not accepting its findings.

As Craig puts it: "settling a matter and accepting its findings are two very different things."

Craig Swanger settled for his health, not because he agreed with the findings. After a bilateral stroke, a coma and major heart surgery, his doctors' unanimous advice was that a drawn-out adversarial process carried an unacceptable risk of another life-threatening stroke. Settlement was a medical decision, not a concession that the findings are correct.

He had the right to an independent review and expected to be vindicated. But he had already spent years under investigation while critically ill, and no finding is worth a life. He protected his recovery and his family, and he maintains his position: he does not agree with the findings against him.

1. Xinja's closure was a "successful failure": every cent of customer deposits was repaid in full, no call was made on the government's guarantee scheme, and the broader financial system remained unaffected.
2. APRA's review process of Xinja and its findings were administrative, not criminal, and were not tried in court.
3. The investigation and determination were self-adjudicated by APRA and have never been subject to independent scrutiny.
4. Craig continues to dispute APRA's findings. Settling the case was a health-driven necessity, not an acceptance of the findings.
5. The use of words like dishonest in the APRA media release characterised the findings and his behaviour in a way that is not consistent with the layperson's meaning of the word.
6. Craig expected to be vindicated by an independent tribunal, but his health, alongside the unpredictable timeline and costs, made continuing the process untenable.
7. It has never been suggested that Craig personally benefited in any way from any of the matters investigated, by APRA or anyone else.
8. Long after Xinja ceased operations, Craig spent years working pro bono, focused entirely on ensuring a fair outcome for the investors.