Areas Of Expertise:

• Strategy Development
• Program Management
• Business Transformation

Education:

• Bachelor of Arts (Communication Studies), University of Western Sydney

About Michael Blomfield

Michael joined Seven Consulting’s Sydney team in January 2023. He is a highly successful financial services innovator, senior executive, and non-executive director with genuine global experience across Asia, North America, the UK and Europe, South Africa, and Australia. He has enormous strategy development, project and program leadership, and operational execution experience in a wide range of businesses as a CEO, a senior executive, a director, and an adviser. Michael is an excellent and experienced values-driven executive leader of all sizes of teams, from small to very large, and a passionate advocate for consumers and retail investors.

What Michael brings

• Strong customer focus and belief in working collaboratively with the business to ensure the best outcomes are achieved.
• Building and leading happy, high performing teams, both large and small.
• Executive level experience managing large scale consulting organisations and respective client programs (outcomes, financials, people, and operations).
• Driver of operational efficiency that serves to enable businesses.

Key Clients:

• Iress
• Investment Trends
• MF Global
• Commonwealth Bank of Australia

Key Achievements:

As Group Executive and Chief Commercial Officer at Iress, Michael was responsible for ~AUD$550m in revenues and ~500 people across Australia, UK, North America, South Africa, and Asia. He initiated and sponsored a ground up change program restructuring the business to give strong client focus and implementing a global sales and service methodology for revenue growth.

As CEO at Investment Trends, Michael managed Australia’s leading independent quantitative research company (~35 staff) which provided deep insights research for the wealth management industry across Australia, the UK, USA, Singapore, Hong Kong, Spain, Germany, and France. Michael designed and implemented a new operating model for the business, built on Agile methodology, that transformed the way the firm’s work was delivered, significantly increasing capacity while driving up staff satisfaction and tenure.

Working as an independent consultant, Michael was the Executive Sponsor of the Commonwealth Bank of Australia’s (CBA’s) Asian Core Banking System implementation. He took over this large (200 person+) project when in red status and delivered it on time and budget. He also led the CBA’s County Banking Supervisory Committee, was the Executive Sponsor of CBA’s Asian Mobile Banking project, and authored CBA’s Asia strategy for the International Financial Services Division in 2012, 2013 and 2014.

As Managing Director at MF Global, Michael was responsible for the firm’s presence in Australia, Singapore (APAC Head Office), Hong Kong, Taiwan, Mainland China, India, Dubai, Japan, and Mauritius – in excess of 1,000 people, with annual revenues of ~USD400m. He took over this role at a time when the business was in dispute with multiple regulators and restored positive relationships and a strong risk and compliance culture. Michael transitioned the business model from an institutional agency broker “eat what you kill” operation to a mid-tier investment bank. He managed all of these businesses into and through administration, liquidation or sale when the US-based parent holding company filed for Chapter 11 protection in October 2011.

As Senior Adviser to the Group Executive, International Financial Services at Commonwealth Bank of Australia, Michael provided independent consulting, project management, executive coaching and M&A oversight for CBA’s Asia investments and subsidiaries. Michael led the establishment of CBA’s County Banking business of 15 separate stand-alone banks in 15 Tier 3 cities across Henan and Hebei provinces, leading every aspect of the program from government and regulatory liaison right through to site selection and fit-out. In addition, Michael led three separate projects to restructure three banks into SME banking specialists – one in Indonesia and two in China. These were whole of organization change programs with project teams of around 50, impacting credit decisioning and core banking systems, thousands of staff, and millions of clients. All three of these banks are now recognized as market leaders in SME banking.

As Executive General Manager at Commonwealth Bank of Australia, Michael was responsible for the SME banking business. He successfully returned the business to >30% pa growth in 18 months, moved client satisfaction from the worst in the industry to second, moved staff satisfaction from the worst in the CBA to top decile. He designed and implemented a revolutionary client engagement and business operation model, improving staff productivity by 80%. He was also a Director of the Commonwealth Bank Foundation, a Founding member of the Bank’s Diversity Council, and Executive Steering Committee member for a wide range of projects, including Core Banking, CommBiz (CBA’s business banking platform), the Branch Re-design Program and the Group-wide single sign-on project.

As General Manager at Commonwealth Bank of Australia, Michael was the responsible executive for Equities Division of the Bank, which generated ~$300 million in annual revenues from a diverse range of Equities businesses, including CommSec. He grew CommSec’s PBT from AUD16m to AUD150m, cemented CommSec as the dominant retail broker in Australia. During his time, he acquired TD Waterhouse Australia (including Charles Schwab Australia), AOT Stockbroking and Neville Ward Direct. Through executive sponsorship of a wide array of projects, Michael developed to maturity what was at the time Australia’s most technologically sophisticated online business.