McKinsey set to entice Oliver Wyman Korea's clients
Park Joong-ho, McKinsey & Company partner
Top-tier consultancy hires mid-tier one's former country manager
By Park Jae-hyuk
McKinsey & Company has hired the former country manager of Oliver Wyman in an apparent effort to entice the customers of the mid-tier consultancy, which decided late last year to cease operations here due to deteriorating revenue.
According to industry sources, Monday, former Oliver Wyman Korea head Park Joong-ho joined McKinsey's Seoul office as a partner in February. He updated his profile recently on LinkedIn, a U.S. social media portal used mainly for professional networking and job seeking.
Although McKinsey has yet to upload his profile on its official website, a source familiar with this issue said the management consulting firm will soon announce the hire, after holding an official partner meeting.
Park worked for 15 years at Oliver Wyman which provides specialist consulting services to banks and financial services firms. He also worked briefly as an equity research assistant at UBS and ABN AMRO Bank before joining the consulting firm in 2006.
Considering his career, it is anticipated the new McKinsey partner will help attract domestic financial companies as new clients.
“McKinsey Korea will likely enhance its capabilities in financial sector consulting,” an industry source said on condition of anonymity.
After opening an office here in the early 2000s, Oliver Wyman helped Shinhan and KB Kookmin banks upgrade their key performance indicators in 2004 and in 2013, respectively and gave advice to domestic insurers including Samsung's financial services units.
Many of its former consultants hold executive positions at local financial companies, such as Lotte Card that appointed former Oliver Wyman Korea head Cho Jwa-jin as CEO and Lotte Insurance that hired two of its former consultants as executives.
Park could potentially make use of his personal networks to link McKinsey with the companies that worked with Oliver Wyman or to hire its former consultants.
Industry officials, however, said better industry insights will be necessary for McKinsey to embrace Oliver Wyman's clients here, as more domestic financial firms are cutting their reliance on foreign consultancies in an apparent measure to save money.
The think tanks of the nation's leading banking groups have already developed expertise by hiring outside experts.
Shinhan Financial Group employed former Bain & Company senior global director Sunny Yi in 2018 to lead its Future Strategy Research Institute. After Yi was appointed CEO of Shinhan DS in 2019, former Samsung Economic Research Institute Vice President Lee Keon-hyok succeeded him.
KB Research, a think tank of KB Financial Group, is led by former Shinhan executive Cho Young-suh, who started his career as a finance ministry official and went on to work for McKinsey and Bain as a consultant in charge of financial firms' growth strategies and digitization.
According to industry officials, Oliver Wyman failed to give useful advice to Korean financial institutions, due to its limited international networks.
McKinsey seems to be attempting to dispel such worries and win the hearts of domestic financial companies by offering various case studies of exemplary global enterprises in terms of digitization and organizational reforms.