Hi Craig!

Thanks for joining us for coffee today. You have a really interesting background. What brought you to this point and choosing to work with Income Asset Management?

I’ve had some incredible opportunities throughout my career which I have relished. At Macquarie I was fortunate to travel extensively around the world at a young age, including heading up Macquarie in New Zealand and India. And a real highlight of my time there was two key – but unusual in combination – roles as the global Chief Investment Officer and Head of Innovation for Macquarie Bank.

Over that time, I leveraged more than 20 years of investment market experience to design, build and lead the alternative investments business to grow to over $10billion FUM in every investment asset class, from institutional to retail clients, in multiple countries. This included working closely with some of the largest pension funds in the world.

I loved it because I was always thinking, learning and creating. It was an exciting and innovative business, built on thought leadership and information transparency. I am particularly proud of the success this delivered as our business strategy throughout the economic cycle, and particularly the GFC.

Doing all this meant that I learnt a great deal, satisfied the urge for adventure and was able to stop working (and travelling non-stop!) for big companies at a very early age. I did this around 10 years ago, and ever since I’ve focused my attention and skills on supporting companies that are trying to make a difference in areas that need to change.

Income Asset Management is one of those companies. That probably seems strange as bonds aren’t quite as exciting as other asset classes I’ve worked in. But that’s a concept I’m here to change.

I don’t believe Australians are given enough genuine freedoms to earn income from their investments. And I also believe that Aussies have not quite caught onto the tremendous power and potential of including income-producing assets, of various forms and on either side of a trade, into their portfolio. It’s time we catch up with the rest of the world on this one. And Income Asset Management is the perfect solution. I love the openness and transparency that IAM offers customers, the diverse opportunities we create, and I value the results-oriented culture where our success is aligned with our customers.

I’ve been a non-executive director at IAM for around four years, and now I’m ready to roll up my sleeves and share my knowledge to add even greater value to our customers and team. I know I can show them something a bit different.

What exactly are you doing?

A lot of people think I’m an economist. In short, I’m not. I totally understand what economists are supposed to do, and I’m very happy talking about economics. But my area of focus is less esoteric and far more tactical. I leverage my knowledge of investments and markets to bring economic insights to life.

I guess you’d say that I’m more about the investment strategy side of economics. For example, right now inflation and rates are at risk of rising further, so what can investors do about that? Is there a risk to close out, a hedge or an opportunity? That sort of thing. In my view, economists tend to spend more time looking backwards, whereas successful investors look forward. So, my job is to help investors to understand those inputs quickly, and then provide ideas on how they can quickly, and confidently, put them into action.

I am thoughtful and do deep research to inform and explain my observations, analysis, and ideas. And I really love sharing those with our team and investors – question time is my favourite! But I am careful not to condescend or assume I know better. In my experience, our customers are typically very smart and have succeeded in their professional lives, and as investors, by listening to advice but not blindly following it. So, my approach is to be transparent about my views and why, but focus on arming investors with the data and insights to form their own views.

What do you mean by “economists tend to spend too much time looking backwards”?

Economists are infamous for struggling to explain new trends. Covid-19 is the most recent and notable example. However, Covid wasn’t new for investors. Sure, it had different ‘packaging’, but it really just reintroduced risks, most of which we’d seen before in some form. As an example, inflation was completely unsurprising given the natural supply-chain issues, and the Central Banks’ management of this inflation outburst were also unsurprising. Honestly, to me the only surprise was the over-reaction of markets to the inflation issues.

In my view, economists blindly relied on old economic models to show us what they believed would happen post the pandemic. And in large part that’s what drove unfortunate comments like Philip Lowe from the RBA stating that rates would remain low until 2024. Obviously, the reality, which is what drives investment returns (not the models), has been very different. And many investors have felt the pain as a result.

How is your approach different?  ?

Investing is actually very intuitive. It’s really not that different from running a business. You can seek and take all the advice you like, but ultimately there is only one person responsible for your returns – you.

When I am talking to the IAM team and our customers, I have that idea front of mind. I’m here to share insights, analysis, and my views. I am here as an adviser, not to tell smart people what to do. I love my job which is to arm investors, and their advisers, with interesting insights, unique perspectives and opportunities they’re not going to find everywhere else. My job is to share my knowledge and our team’s job is to share that along with relevant investment opportunities. But ultimately it’s the customer’s job to choose how to apply that.

Intuitively, while the good investor understands that investing is about predicting the future, they also understand that future trends can be explained by the past. That was Yoda-speak to say that the past is useful for investors to gain insights, but not the answers! That’s how I would sum up my approach – I look outside of the normal research and data, consider macro-economic themes, and look for signals that are more likely to give me a better chance of future-casting.