Edwin Herrie named Head of KPMG's Dutch Advisory division

The Dutch wing of KPMG has appointed Edwin Herrie as the new Head of its Advisory division.

In the role, Herrie leads a team of around 1,500 professionals working in the division’s four main units: Strategy, Management Consulting, Risk Consulting and Deal Advisory. In KPMG’s latest financial year, KPMG Advisory generated revenues of €214 million, up from €184 million four years previous.

The new boss has been tasked with building out the firm’s consulting arm, said KPMG in a press release, yet the focus of the coming period will undoubtedly be on navigating the practice and its consultants through the crisis. As a result of the crisis, clients are cutting back on their consultancy spend, lowering demand for project-based services. According to one estimate, the private sector is now spending between 15% and 20% less on consultants compared to the pre-Covid-19 period. 

KPMG however benefits from the fact that it serves clients across all sectors, and in the Netherlands the firm has seen its leading position in two Covid-19-prone sectors recover much of the fallout from private clients. The Big Four firm traditionally enjoys a strong presence in the financial services sector, and in healthcare the Dutch practice has under the leadership of Anna van Poucke (KPMG’s soon to become global Head of Healthcare) managed to build a frontrunning position ahead of its main large rivals.

Another area of focus of his new role will be to continue the implementation of the KPMG’s digital ambitions, spanning embedding digital into client offerings and growing the maturity of digital operations internally. This also includes overseeing the growing number of technology partnerships. The firm’s IT Advisory practice works closely together with global ERP players such as SAP, Oracle, Microsoft and Salesforce, and specialised software vendors such as Appian, McLaren, ServiceNow and UiPath. 

Herrie was already leading KPMG Advisory on an interim basis, and now formally succeeds Rob Fijneman, who led the wing from 2015 to October last year. Prior to this, Herrie served as Head of Markets, Head of the Deals practice and Head of the Financial Services industry vertical, among others. He joined the accounting and consulting giant twenty years ago, having previously worked at financial services players APG and NIBC.