Michael Finnegan

Mr. Michael P.
Finnegan, CFA, is a Chief Investment Officer at Prairie Wealth Advisors, Inc. As the chief investment officer, he will help shape and steward Prairie Wealth’s investment philosophy, guide portfolio strategy across the client spectrum and strengthen the firm’s manager research and due diligence capabilities.
He is a senior investment professional with more than 3 decades of experience spanning portfolio management, asset allocation, product development, and institutional investment consulting.
He served as Vice President and Chief Investment Officer of Principal Funds, where he led a 35-person investment services team and built the firm’s original sub-advisory platform—growing it into one of the industry’s largest, with over 50 non-affiliated managers and assets exceeding $45 billion.
As lead portfolio manager of Principal’s LifeTime target-date funds, he helped grow assets from $3 billion to over $20 billion, and he designed and managed three outcome-oriented, multi-strategy funds—including a liquid multi-manager hedge fund—whose combined assets surpassed $15 billion at his departure.
He later led the development of a new suite of multi-strategy funds and ETFs at Guggenheim Investment Management.
Earlier in his career, he served as President of Principal Financial Advisors, overseeing more than 400 institutional retirement plan clients and over $6 billion in advisory assets, and chaired Principal’s firm-wide product development and trust investment committees.
His background also includes investment consulting at Wilshire Associates, senior asset allocation, and public-markets oversight at the Iowa Public Employees Retirement System.
He holds a Master of Arts in Finance from the University of Iowa and a Bachelor of Business Administration in Finance from Iowa State University, and he earned the CFA designation in 1996.