Mike Brauneis / Protiviti
Excellence in Financial Services
Mike Brauneis always loved the variety and dynamic nature of consulting. It has been an incredible experience to work with clients around the world, ranging from the largest global banks to start-up fin-tech firms in Silicon Valley, he says.
"I can't imagine another role where I could have learned as much or experienced as many different perspectives as I have here," Brauneis says. "I also think we benefit hugely from the quality, creativity, and work ethic of the people on our teams who decided to make consulting a career instead of all of the other options available to them. The nature of the role essentially self-selects for smart, curious people who want to challenge the status quo, bring forward creative solutions, and fix broken processes."
Brauneis is a Managing Director with Protiviti's Chicago office and has nearly 20 years of financial services experience. Currently, he leads the firm's North American Financial Services industry practice. In this role, Brauneis works with national and international banks, mortgage and consumer/credit card lenders as well as insurance, investment advisory and broker/dealer firms.
"I feel like my career has spanned one of the most challenging but also interesting and significant periods in financial services historically," he says. "In just the past 20 years, the work we do has been at the epicenter of efforts to counter terrorist financing following the 9/11 attacks, the subprime boom and resulting global financial crisis, global regulatory reform, and now an incredibly dynamic era of innovation and disruption driven by technology. I wouldn't have had the same kind of front row seat to that history that I've had if I'd worked outside of the consulting industry."
Since the financial crisis, a significant portion of Protiviti's financial services business has been driven by helping clients address regulatory enforcement matters and related compliance challenges. "However, we recognized several years ago that the regulatory pendulum would eventually swing back to a more normal state," Brauneis says. "Because of that, we invested significant resources in preparing to help our clients return to growth mode. This left us very well-prepared to sustain and continue to grow our practice."
Brauneis joined the firm in 2004, about a year and a half after Protiviti was founded. "We had a great group of people but little brand recognition in the market," he says. "In many ways, we were placing a bet on ourselves to go up against much larger and better-established competitors. We've come a long way since then, growing to almost $1 billion in global revenue, but I don't think my partners or I have ever lost that feeling of hunger, not taking client relationships for granted, and the need to continue to prove ourselves every day."
Q&A: What's been the biggest factor to your success?
Brauneis: "It sounds cliched, but I've consistently found that putting clients' best interests ahead of the firm's short-term objectives pays off in the long run. That has meant being able to have honest conversations with clients. In some cases, those conversations delayed or reduced the scope of an engagement they had initially asked us to help with, but really helped to build long-term trust that we were there to provide independent and objective advice."
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