ResidentialClare BurnettTue 27 Oct 26
Private Credit’s ‘Boring Is Beautiful’ Rule Faces Market Test
The private credit market has grown by 500 per cent during the past decade and now exceeds $200 billion, according to ASIC, but recent problems have exposed holes in the sector.
A company that has weathered this and many other storms is Knox Funds-–formerly GPS—a Brisbane-based private credit investment firm that has been in business for 30 years.
Knox Funds executive director for lending Marnie Woodhead—last week named winner of The Urban Developer’s 2026 Urban Leader Future Leader Award for Building and Consultancy alongside colleague Shelby Clark—is the next generation at Knox.
“I was taken on site inspections as a baby, so [joining the business] was a long time coming,” Woodhead told the Blueprint podcast.
With a fresh perspective and a team with decades of experience behind her, Woodhead said that the private credit market was facing problems from its growth spurt.
“[The Bathla collapse] has put a spotlight on the private credit industry in the ... media,” Woodhead said.
“We’ve seen an influx in recent years of new money. It’s big money, and unfortunately, within private credit, it is a bit of a situation where some people will write deals because they have to get that money out the door.
“If it’s sitting there unused, it is costing the business.”
This is leading to some perhaps riskier lending, and private credit lenders are then forced to take on projects themselves—but this isn’t a new phenomenon, and happens regularly, Woodhead said.
“We will get in, we will finish the project and we will get it sold because that’s how we get our investors’ money back.
“That’s how we get the best return because trying to sell a half completed project is basically impossible.”
“We’re very compliance driven, but we just kind of run with this ‘boring is beautiful’ mentality.”
Staying in its core market of South-East Queensland, Knox embraced thast approach from the outset—given ASIC’s attention toward private credit, Woodhead expects the rest of the industry to follow suit.
The question to ask in private credit was “would you lend your own money? Would you lend your parents’ money?”, she said.
Hear more from ULA winner Marnie Woodhead on the Blueprint podcast this week on YouTube, Apple or Spotify.
