Simon Beissel(Opens in a new tab/window) joined the NRFC in April this year as our Head of Debt Investments. He has more than 20 years’ experience across all aspects of banking, lending, and credit risk, including senior roles at Investec and St. George Bank.
We sat down with Simon to find out more about his role at the NRFC and why debt investments are important to the organisation's broader goals.
Can you tell us about your role as Head of Debt Investments – what are your key responsibilities and focus areas?
My role is to lead a team of debt specialists that provide loans to Australian industrial firms to expand capacity and capability.
My other key responsibility is to bring awareness of the NRFC and its mandate to the broader commercial community.
How do you navigate risk and opportunities in today’s debt investment landscape?
For any commercial firm, debt can be your best enabler or your toughest constraint.
On the other side of that analogy, the NRFC needs to identify the right opportunities and provide capital in the right structures that support our great firms but don’t load them with too many liabilities.
In your view, what are the key benefits of bringing debt investments into the NRFC and how do they align with its broader goals?
Where a business is more developed and has assets and cashflows, debt is a great enabler for growth.
The NRFC is well placed because it can invest in a variety of ways, and any debt can also be structured so that it supports longer-term goals whilst still delivering commercial returns for the NRFC.
Can you tell us a little bit about your career journey so far?
I’m a career banker that has worked for Australian as well as international banks. I’ve been lucky enough to work across a very wide variety of lending roles, which gives me great context. This included small ticket asset finance at Esanda, business banking at St. George, and cross-border Insto M&A finance at Investec.
My first banking job whilst studying was as a teller at the ANZ on the corner of Pitt & Hunter Street in Sydney, so my banking skills include old-fashioned techniques such as counting cash notes.
I have worked through a period of great change in banking and lived through the likes of the HP-12C financial calculator to spreadsheets and memos in yellow envelopes to email, which may seem pedestrian now but were earthshaking developments at the time. In a similar vein, that ANZ branch is now an EV showroom.
What is the best leadership advice you have ever received?
As a younger man, I co-founded a youth leadership charity and volunteered as a trainer and facilitator with amazing young people in Australia and around the world, including in Europe, Africa, and Timor Leste.
My mentors in this journey were exceptional, and they emphasised leadership as an act of service to those you are leading – this is a great ‘why’ when you are needed in a leadership role.
For the second part – the ‘how’ – you must be able to adjust your leadership style to suit the needs of the situation. Some days you need to be the democrat but others you need to be more directive.
What's a fun fact about you that most people wouldn’t guess?
Those who know me personally will appreciate that I am very high on the nerd scale.
I read classics and history with my data scientist mate, play tabletop games (yes, including famous RPGs but also indie and OS games), and taught myself to program in Java for fun.
If you’d like to connect or learn more, you can reach out to Simon Beissel(Opens in a new tab/window) via LinkedIn.