Olivia White

About Olivia

Olivia is a member of the firm’s Financial Services, Risk, and Social Sector Practices and coleads our global knowledge efforts in risk management.

Olivia advises banks and other financial institutions on a wide range of issues across strategy, organization, risk management, and operations. She has led transformative impact for many global financial institutions and corporate business functions. She has also worked extensively on financial inclusion and broader economic development, with a primary focus in emerging markets. Along with her expertise in risk and financial inclusion, Olivia has led projects focused on foundation portfolio construction, customer experience, digital payments, operational improvement, and organizational design.

Olivia has helped multiple institutions transform their enterprise-wide approach to risk management, drawing on deep expertise in risk appetite, identification, effectiveness and efficiency, organization and talent, culture, and other areas. In addition, she has advised numerous banks through the rigorous stress-testing processes including several major transformations related to comprehensive capital analysis and review (CCAR) as well as operational risk remediations. As part of these broader risk transformations, she has also led model risk management and model development efforts across multiple institutions.

Olivia has led extensive research efforts related to financial inclusion and economic development. For example, she has led efforts assessing the potential economic value from digital financial services in the developing world, examining the economics of global payment systems, and investigating risk associated with digitally enabled payments that serve financially excluded populations in the developing world. Her most recent research focused on the benefits and risks associated with Digital ID.

Olivia publishes frequently on topics related to risk and financial inclusion, most notably through the McKinsey Global Institute and McKinsey on Risk. In addition to her publishing efforts, she speaks regularly at large industry events and convenes executives in smaller roundtable formats to push the latest thinking in the industry.

Prior to joining McKinsey, Olivia was a Pappalardo fellow in physics at MIT, where she conducted research both in physics and in neuroscience.