Richard Alden

Background

Before founding the firm, Richard spent nine years advising UK clearing banks on strategy and governance, work that put him inside institutions during a period when regulatory expectations were shifting faster than most operating models could absorb. He became convinced that the standard consulting playbook — developed largely for manufacturing and retail — was being applied to banks with almost no adaptation, and that the mismatch was quietly responsible for a great many failed transformation programmes.

That conviction became Alden Advisory's founding thesis: financial services needed a consultancy built around its own operating logic, not a generalist practice with a financial services 'vertical' bolted on. Twenty-seven years later, Richard remains closely involved in the firm's most structurally complex engagements, particularly those involving core banking and operating model redesign at scale.

He writes and speaks regularly on the relationship between governance structure and decision quality, and continues to review every case study the firm publishes before it goes out under the Transformation Framework™.