arcpoint OCIO adopts dual chief investment officer model

After launching five months ago, arcpoint OCIO has opted for a two-person chief investment officer (CIO) model.

Former chief investment officer of Mason Stevens' Jacqueline Fernley founded the new outsourced chief investment office (OCIO) as a dedicated resource for advice practices, family offices, charities and foundations.

Brad Creighton will join as co-chief investment officer, sharing investment leadership with founding partner, chief executive and co-chief investment officer Fernley. He will also chair the firm's Investment Committee.

arcpoint OCIO said the role is a "true co-chief investment officer, not a deputy".

"Brad's blend of multi asset portfolio management and global macro experience sits squarely alongside Fernley's own, so every mandate has two senior investors accountable for it and continuity of judgement through market cycles and personnel change alike," arcpoint OCIO said.

Creighton has held portfolio management roles at AMP and global macro portfolio management at Millennium Capital Partners in London. He earlier worked in global macro strategy at Optiver, held investment risk roles at Aviva Investors and Credit Suisse and proprietary trading roles at the Commonwealth Bank of Australia.

"What drew me to arcpoint is how central the client is to everything we do. It sounds obvious, but it is not always how things go, given the pressures the industry is under. The job is not to hold a house view for its own sake, or because it is the most scalable thing to deliver," Creighton said.

"It is to produce genuine investment outcomes, in a way that is both disciplined and aligned to the practice's chosen mode of advice. Building that with two of us fully accountable, and a talented team around us, is how we earn the trust that comes with managing someone's capital."

The investment manager is also strengthening the bench behind the two investment leads by appointing Tracey Wahlberg as partner and director of investment management. Wahlberg leads the firm's artificial intelligence (AI) and data science capability.

Wahlberg has built and deployed an AI equity research and portfolio platform that supports arcpoint's research and investment process.

"Tracey has proven herself to us on the investment substance and on the fit, repeatedly, which is why she joins as a partner, not an employee," Fernley said.

"We carry no legacy systems, so we can build capability through an AI native lens, from scratch and at speed. We launched our client portal six weeks ago; it gives our clients the specific services they need from us in real time as well as key portfolio construction tools. It has been very well received."

arcpoint noted both appointments reflect that market regimes now change faster than most portfolios were built to absorb, and dynamic asset allocation is increasingly the difference between portfolios that can keep pace.

"The whole point of a founding team is the quality of the bench you put behind every client decision. Brad has managed multi asset and global macro portfolios at firms that set the standard globally. He sees markets and the role of portfolio construction differently, and he is relentlessly focused on what actually lands in a client's portfolio," Fernley added.

"Two senior decision-makers accountable for every mandate, supported by a formal Investment Committee, is how you deliver consistent outcomes through a market cycle rather than a single point of view."

arcpoint has won six mandates including from Sydney-based firms Capella Advisory, ek Private Advisory and United Advisory. It has also scored clients in Heritage Capital Group and Sherlock Wealth, along with Larapinta Private, a new venture set up by a former Koda Capital partner.