Natalie Griffin and Richard Stewart launch Opal Advisory
The UK’s consulting industry has welcomed a new player: Opal Advisory. As companies struggle to make the most of their AI investments, the firm’s launch targets the execution barriers holding back performance across the professional services sector.
Professional services firms are navigating the toughest operating environment in a decade, with mounting profitability pressures demanding sharper, faster and more confident decision‑making. Yet too many organisations remain constrained by legacy ways of working that slow progress and weaken performance.
Opal Advisory, a UK‑based strategy and management consultancy, has launched to give leadership teams the independent challenge and strategic clarity required to make high‑stakes decisions with confidence - and unlock sustainable performance gains when it matters most.
Co-founder Natalie Griffin commented, “We founded Opal Advisory to be the partners our clients instinctively turn to at pivotal moments. We don’t just produce slide decks - we stand alongside leadership teams, cut through complexity and help them deliver change and enhanced performance that lasts far beyond the end of our engagements.”
The new company has been established with fellow founder Richard Stewart. Both have decades of first‑hand leadership experience across some of the UK’s largest professional services firms, and have led major mergers, transformations, performance turnarounds and governance shifts.
This experience now underpins Opal Advisory’s approach to strategy, execution and leadership support, according to a release from the consultancy. As AI is “rapidly moving from experimentation to expectation”, Opal Advisory specialises in strategy, M&A integration, transformation, performance improvement and leadership support, with a particular focus on organisations where partnership structures, regulatory obligations and complex stakeholder dynamics make delivery more challenging.
Stewart added, “Professional Services firms are facing consolidation, shifting client expectations and increasing commercial pressures. Our role is to bring strategic clarity, commercial discipline and the kind of pragmatic, board-level experience that gives leaders confidence from decision-making to delivery.”
AI consulting space
As results continue to underwhelm on the artificial intelligence, many investors are suddenly looking at substantial AI spending, and wondering when the returns advertised will start to materialise. Recent research shows 61% of leaders now feel more pressure than a year ago to prove ROI from those investments.
For established consulting firms, the challenge will be whether they can adapt their operating models fast enough – or whether the next wave of growth will come from challengers built for the AI era from the outset. Seeking to make the most of the opportunity to disrupt the sector in the meantime, several boutique consultancies have launched in the growing ‘AI-native’ advisory space.
Recent examples also include Klarus and Lightouch Consulting which both opened their doors this year, aiming to position themselves as an alternative to traditional advisory firms, amid what it said was a broader trend towards smaller, specialist consultancies built around AI-enabled delivery, flexible talent models and outcome-focused engagements. In late 2025, Valliance similarly launched, taking aim at a “black hole” in the consulting sector, relating to AI implementation.
