Matt is part of McKinsey’s leadership team for Financial Services and Risk Practices and is the partner lead for McKinsey Values in Boston. He leads our work in collections in North America and is a member of the firm’s global operating committee in collections.
Matt’s experience covers financial-service clients in North America, Central America, the Caribbean, Europe, and Asia. He specializes in advising clients on end-to-end collections transformations, retail-banking operations, and strategy and the strategic implications of distributed-ledger technology (DLT), or blockchain.
Select examples of his recent work include transforming the end-to-end collections operations for a large multinational bank, leading to annualized loss reduction in excess of $100 million, and partnering with a European client to plan the strategy and design the build of the world’s first fully regulated digital asset exchange built on DLT.
Prior to joining McKinsey, Matt was the operations lead for a number of forensic science labs in the United Kingdom, following a postdoctoral career teaching, researching, and publishing on climate change, geochemistry, and oceanography.
Matt Higginson
Leads our customer assistance work in North America and distributed-ledger technology (blockchain) initiatives globally
Published Work
“The promise of generative AI for credit customer assistance,” McKinsey & Company, June 2024
“From ripples to waves: The transformational power of tokenizing assets,” McKinsey & Company, June 2024
“How finance sector treasurers can get ready for CBDCs and stablecoins,” McKinsey & Company, December 2022
“Web3 beyond the hype,” McKinsey & Company, September 2022
“Holistic customer assistance through digital-first collections,” McKinsey & Company, May 2021
“Fighting identity theft in benefit claims and payments,” McKinsey & Company, October 2020
“Reimagining customer service to manage delinquencies after COVID-19,” McKinsey & Company, June 2020
“What next for US credit-card debt?,” McKinsey & Company, May 2020
“Addressing the coronavirus impact on customer delinquency,” McKinsey & Company, March 2020
“Getting a grip on bad debt: Practical steps to help utilities boost their resilience,” McKinsey & Company, November 2019
“The customer mandate to digitize collections strategies,” McKinsey & Company, July 2019
“Going digital in collections to improve resilience against credit losses,” McKinsey & Company, April 2019
“Blockchains Occam problem,” McKinsey & Company, January 2019
“The seven pillars of collections wisdom,” McKinsey & Company, April 2018
“How blockchain could disrupt cross-border payments,” Clearing House Journal, Q4, December 2016
“Blockchain in insurance opportunity or threat,” McKinsey & Company, July 2016
Beyond the hype blockchains in capital markets, McKinsey & Company, December 2015
16 in 2016 Trailblazing trends in global payments, McKinsey & Company, October 2015
Past Experience
LGC
National business-unit head, illicit drugs and toxicology
Operations head, chemistry and firearms
Forensic Alliance
Court-reporting forensic scientist
Boston University
Lecturer, department of Earth sciences
University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth
Research associate
Education
University of Bristol
PhD, organic chemistry
University of Oxford
MBA
MA; BA, geography