LPA expands the UK consulting team with two new senior hires

By Joy Dumasia

LPA, the capital markets technology and advisory firm, announced the expansion of its United Kingdom consulting team with two additional senior hires: Russell Chumbley as Director: Capital Markets Consulting, Technology, Development & Transformation and James Kirkham as Head of UK Risk Function.

Russell and James will be based out of LPA’s Canary Wharf office in London, where they join a rapidly growing team of consultants in the UK market. In 2021, LPA hired Mark Reeves to accelerate its American and British software and consulting businesses, followed by the appointments of Peter Leech as Partner and Head of UK Consulting and Deniz Patel as Director, Head of UK Consulting and Software Sales. Building on its strong client base in continental Europe, LPA’s London office is rapidly becoming an important consulting hub for the firm, alongside Frankfurt and Zurich, with plans to grow the team further in 2022.

Russell has over 30 years of experience in the financial services industry, most recently in an independent advisory and consultancy capacity covering industry insight, FinTech and digital transformation. Prior to this, Russell was at Nomura International, where he last served as their Global Head of Enterprise Data and Corporate Technology (MD), working with business clients to innovate, transform and deliver large scale change to improve the customer experience, strengthen controls and increase operational efficiency.

During his career, Russell has held technology leadership positions across front, middle and back-office business functions with experience in product development, managed services, integrating new solutions into existing architectures and setting up new trading entities.

James is an experienced Lead Risk Management Systems Consultant with over 30 years of experience in delivering risk management change programmes for some of the world’s largest banks, including HSBC, UBS and Santander. James is an expert in risk model development and deployment for PIT/TTC PD, EAD and LGD models for both regulatory capital and IFRS9 provisioning, including recent QIS/PRA stress testing, and has supported a variety of Basel change programmes.

In his previous role with AT&T/Teradata, James’ team defined and brought to market the ‘Value Analyzer’ risk adjusted profitability analytics product, which is today widely used in many banks globally. James was also Senior Principal Consultant for the launch of Sainsbury’s Bank.

Peter Schurau, CEO of LPA, said: “It’s inconceivable to run a high-growth FinTech company and not have a significant presence in the UK. London is and will remain a pivotal financial centre for the world economy. Russell and James’ appointments mark only the first round of many increases to the team in a phased recruitment programme.”

Mark Reeves, Senior Advisor at LPA, said: “We welcome talent the calibre of James and Russell as we continue on our growth trajectory in the UK. Their vast capital markets knowledge and experience overseeing client relationships, strategy, architecture and implementation will help establish LPA as a leader in software solutions and consulting and take our UK business to new heights.”

“Disruptive forces are changing capital markets and posing major challenges for the financial services industry.” said Russell Chumbley. “LPA has been driving the digitalization of the capital market business for over 20 years, and I look forward to supporting clients in the analysis, planning, development and implementation of digital technologies.”

James Kirkham said: “I am excited to join LPA at a time of unprecedented change in financial markets. The scale and reach of the LPA network, alongside the skills of our software and consulting teams in areas spanning advanced technologies, credit risk and change management, present a much sought-after capability to our clients and the wider capital markets industry.”