Duke & Company

Strategy consulting and delivery for financial services.

Duke & Company works with boards and C-suites on growth strategy, capital markets and wealth technology, payments and digital assets, enterprise AI and modernization, and bringing emerging technology into regulated institutions at scale. Founded 2010. We stay to deliver.

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What we do

Business strategy, growth & go-to-market. Corporate and business-unit strategy; market definition and sizing; offering design, revenue models and go-to-market; business cases and monetization; partnerships, joint ventures and corporate development — from the principal's chair, not the sidelines.

Capital markets & wealth technology strategy. Platform strategy and roadmaps across trading, FICC, clearing and settlement, collateral and wealth; target operating models; the executive materials that carry a decision through a board or an operating committee.

Payments & digital assets. Real-Time Rail and ISO 20022; tokenized deposits, custody and DLT settlement; vendor strategy and build-versus-partner economics; fraud and financial-crime controls that satisfy regulators.

Enterprise AI & modernization. Enterprise AI strategy, agentic operating models and AI-enabled delivery; application-portfolio rationalization and decommission economics; cloud and platform modernization; the architecture to make it hold together at scale.

Emerging technology adoption. Introducing new technology into regulated institutions and getting it to production: blockchain, big data and analytics, AI, open banking and digital identity. The claim is adoption, not experimentation.

How we work

An operator's record behind the advice. The firm is led by a three-time CEO who has held a P&L above $200M, reported to a board and answered to regulators. Recommendations are made by someone who has had to live with them.

Partner-level engagement, delivery-level depth. We work in the model of a strategy-firm partner — with the client's executives, on the client's decision — and carry the strategy through architecture and approval into delivery where it matters.

Honest, evidence-based advice. We say when the timeline is unrealistic, when the plan won't solve the problem, and when there isn't enough information. Then we work through what needs to happen, who owns it, and what can be delivered.

Selected mandates

Capital Markets and Wealth technology strategy — Canadian bank. Technology strategy and roadmaps for Capital Markets and Wealth alongside a multi-stream transformation program spanning FICC, clearing and settlement, and unified model integration; target operating model for the architecture function; executive materials for the COO and leadership team.

Tokenized deposits — TD Securities. Early member of the Digital Assets Strategy Team, contributing alongside BCG to the evaluation of 60+ opportunities. Led tokenized deposits from vendor selection across ~20 providers through design concept, target architecture and end-to-end security approval. The initiative has since scaled into a $100M+ program.

Enterprise modernization and AI strategy — TD Bank Group. Board-level modernization strategy for the enterprise application portfolio: decommission baselines, portfolio economics and the scorecard used to measure technology-footprint reduction. Enterprise AI strategy, agentic-system risk and an AI capacity model for a 300-person architecture organization; redesign of the solution-assessment process into an evidence-based, automatable rubric.

Market entry and payments strategy — Kyndryl. For the President of the financial services business: market definition across three horizons, TAM/SAM/SOM sizing, offering design and go-to-market for the tier-two market, originating a qualified pipeline above $30M. A follow-on mandate designed a fraud-as-a-service proposition for real-time payments.

Enterprise CRM transformation — Hydro One. Strategy and delivery leadership for a multi-hundred-million-dollar CRM transformation.

Fintechs and infrastructure firms have been advised on growth, payments, digital assets, enterprise AI and capital strategy since 2010.

Leadership

Duke Butler, CEO & Managing Partner

Duke is a three-time CEO and board director who has spent his career on both sides of the table: running technology, payments and digital-asset businesses inside banks, and building the firms that advise them.

He was the third CEO of Prairie Payments Joint Venture, a $1B+ national payments platform owned by 80+ financial institutions, where he held the full P&L, raised $100M+ in capital, rebuilt the executive team and scaled the platform to $250B+ cleared annually. Before that he spent a decade in senior RBC seats: Head of Strategy for RBC Capital Markets, Senior Management Team executive setting enterprise architecture and a $100M+ annual investment portfolio, and Head of the $250M+ Digital Bank Program — where he introduced blockchain to the bank, founded its Big Data & Analytics Centre of Excellence and led the adoption of Apple Pay, Plaid, MuleSoft, Okta and CrowdStrike. His earlier career spans Microsoft, Deloitte and American Express, and he co-founded and led Magellan, an EY Entrepreneur of the Year nominee.

He has served as a director of Credit Union Central of Canada and as Chair of the Board of Magellan. Queen's MBA, Waterloo MASc (Engineering), ICD.D, CMC.

Link: LinkedIn

Contact

Start a conversation. Most mandates begin with a short call about the decision in front of you.

duke@duke-company.com · 647-220-3082 · Toronto

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