Stuart Blake
Managing Director & Founder
+61 411 012 701
Managing Director and CEO with over 30 years’ experience in Financial Services, Health, Retail, Energy and Insurance. Stuart is Managing Director of The Bridge International and has been a Chief Executive at IAG, Australia’s largest insurer and Chief Executive at Wesfarmers Insurance. He has led and consulted to brands including NRMA, RACV, Berkshire Hathway (US), Alinta, icare, EML, Swiss Re, Progressive (US), RAA, Coles Insurance and Lifeline.
After a successful career on the client-side, Stuart co-founded The Bridge International in 2018, an innovative and alternative management consulting business. Providing a better value for money strategic advisory model with more experienced consultants, better outcomes at a lower cost.
He has led fintech and large mature businesses with market shares of over 40%, delivered significant cultural, customer and commercials outcomes.
At Wesfarmers, Australia’s largest conglomerate, Stuart was Chief Executive of Coles Insurance the quickest international insurance start-up to 400,000 customers. This insuretech disruptor was ground-breaking and was the most successful non-traditional insurance brand in Australia between 2012 and 2018.
EXPERTISE
Stuart has transformed large scale operations with over 2,000 employees, been accountable for 4 start-ups totalling $1B in revenue and has extensive P&L, pricing and underwriting, distribution, strategic, risk and compliance and distribution experience including call centres, BPO, digital, branches and agencies.
Stuart has also completed an Executive Leadership Program at Harvard Business School and has been a board member on numerous Financial Services businesses. He Chairs an Australian owned fintech operating in North America and is President APAC of The Claims Bridge International as US based AI and digitial platform startup.
CO FOUNDING A NEW CHALLENGER MODEL
Stuart also believes, as do many other business leaders, that the traditional consulting model is broken and is rapidly losing relevance in this changing world.
He decided to walk the talk, co-founding the Bridge International, a new advisory team of like-minded, experienced executives, who shared his leadership and transformation philosophy and wanted to disrupt the traditional consulting model.
BEST VALUE FOR MONEY
Stuart and David have deliberately set up The Bridge International as a challenger advisory service, providing the best value for money to their clients.
In addition to the low overhead model, the Bridge does not rely on high margins to pay all the consulting Partners a share of the fees for the engagement, irrespective of whether they work on the project or not.
This model allows The Bridge to bring in more experienced and credentialed consultants than incumbent firms. The client pays for who they get, as well as practical solutions that the team know can be implemented.
TRANSFORMATION THROUGH PEOPLE
His passion and expertise is leadership, cultural and business transformation through a people first approach, working with boards, executives and other key stakeholder to deliver the organisational purpose (and help employees realise their full potential)
He specialises in strategy, operational transformation, turnarounds, start-ups and low-cost value based disruptive business models. As well as evolving large incumbent organisations by driving purpose driven cultures that need to compete harder in an increasingly competitive environment.
FAST TRACKED PROBLEM SOLVING
As a group of practitioners, not career consultants, Stuart and The Bridge are able to fast track problem solving and execution of solutions, further reducing the cost of their engagement.
A TRUSTED ADVISOR
Stuart has become a trusted advisor, supported by his team, to several high profile blue chip, start up and not-for-profit clients in Australia and overseas, including RAA, SwissRe, icare, EML, Lifeline, Kohab and The Claims Bridge International.