Meet the Founder: Matthew G. Strelitz

With a career spanning over 20 years in banking, consulting, and strategy, Matthew Strelitz is a recognized leader in banking, data, and innovation. As the founder and CEO of Radical Data, he brings a wealth of experience to the table, helping organizations trudge through the complexities of modern banking and fintech. His unique approach blends strategic insight with a deep understanding of data and technology, creating powerful solutions that drive success.

A Visionary Leader in Banking and Consulting

Matthew’s career has been defined by his ability to use alternative and traditional data and analytics to identify opportunities for growth, value creation, and performance improvement within the commercial and transaction banking sector. His work has focused on helping clients develop and execute growth and go-to-market strategies, driving transformational change that enable new business models, embedding digital and analytic capabilities into customer-centric platforms, designing and delivering superior customer experiences, and modernizing operating models from the front- to back-office.

His leadership roles at prestigious firms such as Oliver Wyman, PwC Advisory, and Deloitte Consulting deepened his domain expertise in commercial banking, transaction services, payments, and innovation. Through these positions, Matthew has been at the forefront of the industry, guiding companies to not only adapt but thrive in the face of constant change.

Empowering Organizations through Data

As the founder of Radical Data, Matthew helps organizations unlock the power of data to drive better decision-making and strategic growth. Radical Data focuses on building data-driven solutions for banks, fintech companies, and other businesses looking to create a competitive edge in their industry. Matthew’s work with Radical Data has revolutionized the way companies approach their strategy, operations, and customer interactions, ensuring they are not only efficient but innovative and compelling.

Under his leadership, Radical Data has become a trusted partner for institutions seeking to develop and implement cutting-edge technologies, such as AI, in commercial and transaction banking. Matthew’s ability to combine data analytics with his domain expertise to help clients to uncover and capture new opportunities, address emerging risks or challenges, modernize commercial lending and payment models, and deliver white glove client service at scale.

Expertise That Drives Results

Throughout his career, Matthew has consistently delivered results for banking clients across a wide range of engagement types, including:

Growth Strategy: Matthew has helped banks navigate and grow within a rapidly intensifying competitive, regulatory, and macro-economic landscape using advanced analytics and data-driven insights to uncover opportunities in current, adjacent and new markets, size the market and perform client segmentation to identify target client segments/sectors with the highest potential value, and deploy new and/or enhanced solutions that address segment and sector-specific needs, and formulate client specific go-to-market strategies that position them for sustainable growth

AI and Digital Transformation: Matthew has partnered with banks of all sizes to drive digital transformation with the goal of creating value by continuously deploying technology and innovation at scale. Given the rise of Gen AI, recent digital transformations I have led in the past year have, have included AI transformation, if not placed it at the center of the transformation. Matthew’s approach to digital transformation is centered on having a clear understanding of your business goals and how technology can help achieve them, modernizing operating models to be more agile, scalable and responsive so that new iterations of AI and other innovation can be readily adopted and rapidly deployed.

Operational Excellence & Client Experience: Matthew has helped banks drive superior customer experience and reinvent operating models to best align with and reinforce strategic goals. Matthew employs a customer-centric approach to operational excellence that addresses critical operational weakness and, by extension transforms the customer experience. By establishing quantifiable operational and customer-centric goals at the outset and intimately understanding target client needs, preferences and value drivers, he can manufacture insight driven, client personas, map end-to-end target client journeys, and most importantly distill the critical few capabilities needed to achieve operational and experiential goals and objectives

Data-Driven Research & Analytics:  Matthew has decades of experience in the alternative data space combining traditional with alternative datasets and pioneering new analytic methodologies and models that uncover hidden opportunities, provide sector, market and company specific analysis and insights, increase visibility into local, regional, and national competitive dynamics, and offer actionable intelligence. Matthew provides end-to-end data and analytic guidance, guiding clients through design, development and piloting, to full scale adoption.

A Track Record of Success

Matthew’s career is marked by his ability to lead ground breaking initiatives that create lasting impact. His strategic insights have enabled banks to prioritize growth initiatives and implement them effectively, creating value both in the short and long term. Notable accomplishments include:

1. Developed a multi-year enterprise growth strategy and roadmap for a publicly traded commercial bank focused on improving returns while identifying next-generation growth opportunities
2. Re-designed leading commercial bank’s client service model to deliver a deliberate, client-centric experience, lower the cost to serve, and provide “white glove” service at scale via value-based client segmentation, structured intake, routing, and resolution pathways underpinned by differentiating digital capabilities and target investments in technology and innovation
3. Developed financial and operational performance assessment model and peer benchmark for a large commercial bank to provide greater visibility into overall and bank-specific competitive positioning across markets and regions to understand key drivers of performance, capability, resource and investment gaps, and data to further inform strategic decisions
4. Helped a global bank be more digitally focused—designing a 5-year strategy, identifying acquisitions, enhancing digital product development, and establishing a digital approach to customer life-cycle management
5. Led a commercial banking salesforce transformation from pilot to a launch, embedded regular coaching, training and development, tailored dashboards, and frontline performance management for more than 150 RMs, resulting in increased pipelines, win rates, and margins
6. Led strategy engagement for a global cash management provider looking to launch a new digital cash solution leveraging Banking-as-a-Service (BaaS) to enhance and fill product capabilities to accelerate time to market, rapidly scale and improve product operating costs by 15% – 25%
7. Led a commercial credit transformation program focused on simplifying, streamlining, and automating the underwriting and decisioning processes by refining the vision, rationalizing program goals to 3 primary objectives, rationalizing adjacent and non-core initiatives, and developing strategic partnerships to enabling cost reductions of $25 million in 2 years
8. Performed extensive research and analysis for a leading commercial bank seeking to differentiate through specialty lending verticals by isolating the value drivers, assessing core competencies and capabilities, identifying the critical few capabilities, value propositions and solutions powering leading industry-specific banking verticals.  

Matthew’s expertise has made him a sought-after advisor in the industry, known for his unique, insight-driven approach and deep domain expertise and decades of experience working with commercial and transaction banks to profitably grow, digitally transform, improve operational efficiency, curate superior client experiences, and embed powerful analytic solutions across the bank.

Looking Ahead: Shaping the Future of Financial Services

Matthew Strelitz remains committed to pushing the boundaries of what’s possible in the financial services industry. At Radical Data, he continues to work closely with industry leaders to shape the future of banking, payments, and fintech. His passion for innovation and deep knowledge of the industry’s challenges makes him a standout figure in the financial world.

Through Radical Data, his prime objective is to help financial institutions embrace innovative technologies and harness the power of data, creating value in ways that were previously unimaginable. His dedication to helping clients stay ahead of the curve ensures that Radical Data remains at the forefront of industry change, driving success and growth for its clients.