Strategy•Governance•Transformation
Strategic advisory & fractional leadership
for causes that matter
Coeur de Lion is a boutique advisory firm. The goal is straightforward: senior-level judgement, delivered directly, and accountable for the outcome. The work is done by the person you speak to, not delegated down a chain, because there is no chain to delegate down. The firm works with organisations whose purpose it believes in.
You’ve seen it before: advice that conveniently points toward whatever the adviser has to sell. It’s called the principal-agent problem, but you do not need the name to recognise the pattern. We don’t do that here. Our advice is not shaped by what we also sell, by any partnership working in the background, or by what our next engagement looks like. When a particular tool or partner is genuinely the right answer for you, we will say so, openly and for that reason alone.
Purpose-led organisations face many of the same pressures as large multinationals, without the same resources to meet them. Coeur de Lion exists to bring that calibre of expertise to the people doing work that matters.
This isn’t a comprehensive list, nor is it a broad market play. It’s a deliberate choice: organisations where values and capability both matter, not just one. If this sounds like you, you’re in the right place.
An organisation that needs operational leadership to define strategy or roadmap, redesign the operating model, or lead a transformation gets it now, not after a six-month search, and only for as long as they need it. Accountable for outcomes, not hours logged, gone once the job is done.
An organisation without the experience or capability in-house gets direct access to someone who has done it before, not just a recommendation. That includes AI Readiness and Governance Advisory: helping organisations adopt AI safely, with data sovereignty, privacy, and self-hosted alternatives to Big Tech built in from the start.
A board that needs a genuine outside view gets a trustee, NED, or advisory board member who has sat on the other side of the table, understands board accountability and fiduciary responsibility, and knows what a board actually needs to hear, not what’s comfortable to say.
Recovered a £1bn+ regulatory divestment under active supervisory scrutiny, re-baselining the integrated plan and producing the regulator-facing plan of record for technology scope to meet regulatory timelines.
Deal value protected and regulator confidence restored, with the re-baselined plan of record accepted against regulatory timelines.
Board trustee through the merger of two education charities into a unified organisation, contributing to strategic oversight, governance, and the Charity Commission due diligence a merger of that scale demands.
The unified charity now supports more than 30,000 young people a year across London, backed by a volunteer network 2,500 strong.
Established a $30m+ transformation portfolio office from the ground up, enabling board-level oversight and aligning enterprise priorities across EMEA and Asia Pacific.
Faster funding decisions and portfolio-wide risk visibility across EMEA and Asia Pacific, with the office adopted as the insurer’s permanent operating structure.
Acting EMEA Head of Change for eighteen months, leading a distributed team of twenty-four through major organisational realignment. Established a regional change governance framework and Executive PMO, resolving multiple outstanding regulatory findings, and led the overhaul of the AML Centre of Excellence, enabling centralisation of global AML operations under a single function.
Outstanding regulatory findings resolved, further supervisory monitoring prevented, and global AML operations centralised under a single function.
Recovered a stalled £30m regulatory remediation programme during a live acquisition, safeguarding compliance for over 500,000 customer accounts within the acquisition timeline.
Compliance safeguarded for 500,000+ customer accounts and the remediation completed inside the acquisition timeline, protecting the transaction.
Shaped and led a $20m regulatory compliance programme under CIO and CSO sponsorship over eighteen months. Delivered on time, with no repeat findings.
Delivered on time with no repeat findings, strengthening operational resilience ahead of the regulatory deadline.
Designed governance controls for a €6.1bn non-performing loan portfolio under European Central Bank and Central Bank of Ireland scrutiny.
Assurance controls met Joint Supervisory Team (ECB/CBI) requirements across the full €6.1bn portfolio.
Non-executive director through a period of significant organisational development, including the establishment of a dedicated entity for people-powered networks. Served on the new entity’s board from its formation, shaping its governance as it scaled.
From a standing start in 2020 to more than 250 grassroots groups hosted and £8.7m distributed to communities in a single year.
Founding director of the UK entity, shaping its governance and strategic direction through to its integration with a partner social enterprise.
More than 200 community groups were using the platform by the time of integration, becoming the successor entity’s founding book of hosted groups.
Corporate advisory board member, advising on strategy, governance, and organisational development in support of the charity’s social mobility mission.
Advising a mission that now engages 230,000 young people across England and Wales through schools, colleges, and digital programmes.
Led post-acquisition integration workstreams across more than six hundred acquired branches and the decommissioning of 141 legacy systems, inside the group’s in-house strategy function.
Three consecutive acquisitions integrated onto a single operating model, with 600+ branches migrated and 141 legacy systems retired.
Country Management Committee member, working from the CEO’s office to lead strategic change across East Africa: a thirteen-month core banking replacement and a pan-African SME product strategy rolled out across seven countries.
Core banking replaced in thirteen months; the SME product and marketing strategy went live across seven countries.
Successive senior programme and portfolio roles across the European Commission-mandated divestment of one of the UK’s largest high-street banks. Led the PMO of a c£25m business and technology programme, managed £16m of platform delivery to route-to-live, and governed delivery readiness across 220+ concurrent programmes through to brand separation.
Brand separation delivered in line with European Commission competition requirements, with critical delivery deadlines met.
Evaluated business plans and funding proposals for more than fifty civil-society organisations seeking donor funding, serving on the grant assessment committee of a ten-donor rapid funding mechanism governed by the national AIDS commissions.
The fund channelled $9.7m to 88 civil-society organisations across Tanzania and was cited in PEPFAR planning documents as a proven success.
Developed the strategy and proposition for the sector body’s £38m government-backed modernisation programme, designed to give more than four hundred UK credit unions access to new technology platforms, outsourced operations, and enhanced member services.
The proposition was adopted by the board, secured the programme’s DWP funding tranche, and went live with a first wave of credit unions during the engagement.
Defined the Target Operating Model and governance framework for a newly created Group Risk Transformation Office, providing strategic oversight across regulatory, strategic, and technology transformation.
The office was stood up and operating to the design before the engagement closed, with refreshed governance, controls, and measures in place for group-level oversight.
Advised the UK COO and Group leadership on a £20m programme aligning the UK private bank’s technology and operations with the group platform, brokering the three-way delivery commitment between the bank, its parent group, and the platform provider.
The three parties committed to a single programme plan, and the implementation completed on the date that plan had set.
Defined the UK country strategy and Target Operating Model for an offshore banking group weighing the future of its London operations, securing group alignment on exit and retention choices.
The group adopted the recommendation, wound down UK private banking, and carried the mortgage business forward under a dedicated entity launched in January 2017.
No engagements match — clear a filter.
We give honest counsel, even if it’s not what you want to hear, but it’s the right place to start.
Every organisation is a community of people, not a set of numbers, and we work accordingly.
We don’t drift from what the evidence supports, even when a faster answer would be easier to sell.
Engagements take the shape the work needs: a fractional standing arrangement for a fixed period, a defined mandate with a day rate, or an outcome-based scope where the result is what matters. We work the way the problem requires, not from a price list.
Coeur de Lion was founded to build something different: an advisory practice that puts the people it serves ahead of its own commercial interest, by design rather than by exception. We want to work with organisations that share our values, and we would rather do the right work, for the right reasons, and build things that hold up long after we have left. Some will call that idealistic, but some things are worth believing in.
Well-resourced organisations take a certain calibre of expertise for granted. Purpose-led organisations face decisions of the same weight without the same access, and that is the gap this firm was built to close.
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