Arjan Buursink on his return to management consulting

Having left the office of a major advisory brand for the banking sector a decade ago, Arjan Buursink has now returned to the world of management consulting. He spoke to Consultancy.eu about the benefits of trading in life in the Big Four for a fresh start with an ambitious boutique.

Founded in 2016, ACE Company is a consultancy headquartered in Amsterdam dedicated to helping clients in the financial sector, working with them to strategise, guide, facilitate and execute regulatory driven change. 

Arjan Buursink joined the advisory firm in May 2021, after more than a decade at Dutch financial giant Rabobank. A former Senior Consultant with a Big Four firm, Buursink decided the time was right to re-join the professional services sector when ACE reached out to discuss the firm’s ambitions with him.

“I've really enjoyed working for Rabobank and learned a lot there,” he explained. “After speaking with ACE, I got really interested in the company given its core values and being a growing start-up. Also, the ambitions of ACE and particularly of its label ACT [focused on the development of RegTech products and services] was very appealing. It is a lifelong wish of me to be part of a team that develops its own software product.”

Last time he was in the consulting sector, Buursink enjoyed spells with global giants Deloitte and Capgemini. This time, however, it was ACT’s positioning as a smaller, specialist firm that drew him in. Noting that its size meant “the employee’s contribution to the company has much more impact,” he added that acting as part of its ambitious growth plans, he felt he could make “a notable contribution to the future shape of a company.”

Buursink went on, “It’s something I find really fascinating… So far it has been a real pleasure to work in very positive creative atmosphere with bright people having a broad range of seniority. I am really looking forward to help build the services and team at ACT.” 

With more than 15 years of experience in the financial sector, Buursink’s knowledge is a major asset for ACT. In his role of Principal Consultant, his focus is on data science applications within the financial sector, and RegTech applications. He noted that to be active as a data scientist “matches my background being a statistician very well,” something which has been a big help in his first engagements with ACT. 

“In the first three months we've been working on a range of propositions which we could help our clients with,” Buursink concluded. “Much of the input came from my personal experience at a bank. I am familiar with the problems a bank faces so that helps creating propositions containing solutions to their problems.”