Tom McKelvey
Chief Operating Officer
Capco
Excellence in Financial ServicesUnder the direction of Tom McKelvey’s leadership, Capco’s North American practice has grown 50 percent in the last six months, primarily driven by new demand from financial services clients.
“Times of turmoil call for game changing consulting,” he says. “And for more than a year, the financial services industry has been the quintessential example of that turmoil. These companies will re-emerge. But they will have to re-emerge in very different ways.”
As a result, clients are “begging for different answers from their consultants,” McKelvey says. “Generic consulting is not going to work real well in this environment.” Capco is doing a lot of transformation work for financial services clients. “The industry has gone through massive turmoil and needs help changing processes. They need help figuring out what they want to keep internally and what they want to spin off,” he says. “We’re also working on improving efficiencies. On average, we’re able to take out at least 4 to 5 percent of their cost structure permanently.”
While there are larger consulting firms with bigger brands, Capco’s smaller size is not a detriment. “Over the last five to seven years, clients’ procurement divisions have become more sophisticated. They understand that the best firm may be a specialist firm, a boutique,” he says. And that evolution in mindset is benefiting Capco in a big way. “The market reaction has been beyond anything we could have imagined,” McKelvey says. “We’re in the process of doubling our business in five quarters. Our North American practice has gone from accounting for 25 percent to 55 percent in that time—revenue is up 400 percent in a year. Firm-wide, our run rate has grown from $125 million to $250 million.”
Clearly that growth rate isn’t sustainable, “but there are tremendous opportunities. As we talk with clients and hear how they plan to hire outside advisory help, we like what we hear. We’re not seeing pausing; we think we’re going to maintain growth. We know growth will moderate out a little bit, but we are quite optimistic for the next four to six quarters, which is as far out as we can see.”
—Jess Scheer
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