Ugur is a Partner with Oliver Wyman, based in New York. He is currently Vice Chairman for Financial Services, leading content and new client development. His responsibilities include being the Global Head of Digital Assets. Prior to this role, Ugur led Americas Finance and Risk, Public Policy, and Corporate and Institutional Banking practices, and continues to steer the firm’s high-impact, strategy, corporate finance and risk management projects for clients across the globe.
With the firm since 1997, Ugur has served senior executives at some of the largest banks, clearing and settlement houses, multi-lateral development banks, U.S. agencies and GSEs, regulators and public policy leaders, crypto-native firms, insurance companies, and private equity houses. He supported over 100 institutions to address strategic, technical, operational and organizational challenges including strategic planning, forecasting, budgeting, risk management, balance sheet management, analytical modeling, new product development, use of AI for various applications, due diligences, vendor reviews, capital planning under CCAR, liquidity stress testing, recovery, and resolution planning, and the best management of limited resources, aligned with strategy, under the risk appetite and regulatory constraints and rating agency considerations for capital, liquidity, leverage, and collateral.
As the Global Head of Digital Assets, Ugur leads the firm’s offerings to traditional finance players, crypto-native firms, investors and public policy makers. His recent client work topics includes digital asset risk management, regulation of crypto-assets, designing stablecoin strategies, CBDCs, comparative analysis of over 100 distributed ledger technologies and matching these for business cases, and new digital asset product design.
In addition to project work, Ugur has contributed significantly to industry debates in risk management, analytical modeling, and digital assets, and published several articles. His most cited article, “Reconcilable Differences” with Andrew Hickman, was incorporated into Basel II, III, and IV, the capital requirements framework used by banking regulators worldwide, and is viewed as a breakthrough concept in credit risk management practices. The paper is also published as an independent chapter in four books. Ugur is also the chief architect of Oliver Wyman’s COVID-19 Pandemic Navigator.
Ugur has a PhD in Engineering from Princeton University and taught applied mathematics and engineering at Princeton and Turkiye’s Koc Universities before coming to Oliver Wyman.