Aude Aliquid Novus — Dare Something New

Strategy without execution is the slowest route to success.
Execution without strategy is the noise before failure.

Aude does both, in one engagement, under one person, ending in something that still runs after I have gone. That is a narrower promise than a strategy house makes, and it is the reason the work is priced the way it is.

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Twenty years operating in insurance, insurtech, fintech, and mobility. Contracted through a UK company for UK and EU clients, and a US company for US clients.

The Argument

Most consulting sells a recommendation and calls the job done. The recommendation is the easy part. I have sat on the client side of that transaction often enough to know what happens next: the deck goes into a drawer, the organisation lacks the capacity to act on it, and eighteen months later someone commissions the same piece of work again.

A recommendation nobody has the capacity to execute is not a strategy. It is an expensive opinion.

Aude is built the other way round. Every engagement produces an artefact that ships or a function that runs, and the test of whether it worked is whether it is still running after I have gone. That is a narrower promise than a strategy house makes, and it is the reason the work is priced the way it is.

The practice is one person with a great deal of machinery behind him. That is stated plainly because it is the point, not an apology. The agentic systems this firm runs on are the same ones it will build for you, and they are why a practice of one can hold a book of work that used to need a floor of people.

The Ground I Cover

Five functions, run rather than advised on.

Twenty years across insurance, insurtech, fintech and mobility, mostly on the operating side. These are the five functions I have run rather than advised on, which is the only reason to hire a practice this size.

Strategy: Where to play and where not to. Market entry, portfolio choices, and the numbers that have to be true before a bet is worth making.
Innovation: New propositions and new categories, corporate venturing, and the judgement about which emerging bets are real and which are a demo with a good narrator.
Product: Proposition design, pricing and rating, and the journey from quote to bind to claim — built as one system rather than four departments.
Transformation: Turning round what is not working. The operating model, the cost line, and the sequencing that decides whether the fix holds after attention moves on.
Commercialisation: Distribution, go-to-market, brand and demand generation, and the commercial model underneath them.

How You Buy It

Four ways in, each with an end date.

The functions above are the ground. These are the shapes the work takes. Bounded scope, named deliverables, and a definition of done agreed before anything starts. If what you need is not one of these, say so and we will scope it, or I will tell you who is better placed.

Growth Diagnostic

Three weeks · Fixed scope · Fixed fee

A hard look at where growth is actually leaking. You get a baseline you can defend to a board, a competitive read, and a ranked list of what to do about it. It converts into a longer engagement or it ends cleanly. Both are fine.

Performance baseline with the numbers reconciled to source
Competitive and category read
Full-funnel map with annotated drop-off analysis
Prioritised opportunity matrix, sized and sequenced

Founders and C-suite who suspect the problem but cannot yet name it Fixed fee, quoted at scoping

Build Sprint

Four to eight weeks · Acceptance criteria · Fixed scope

A scoped build against agreed acceptance criteria. A pricing model, a quote flow, a dashboard, a working prototype, or an agentic system that does a job someone is currently doing by hand. It runs when the sprint ends.

The working artefact, deployed and documented
The model or logic behind it, legible to your team
Handover pack and a run-book
A short note on what it cost to run and what it should replace

Teams who have decided what to build and need it built Fixed scope, priced on outcome

Fractional Executive

Six months · One to two days a week · Renewable

The practice’s proven pattern. Four to six numbered workstreams, each with named deliverables, reporting to a named founder or C-level executive. Not advice with a monthly call attached: a function that runs, staffed at executive level, for a fraction of the cost of the seat.

Four to six workstreams with dated milestones
The function stood up and operating
Your team carrying it by month six
Monthly written report against the workstream plan

Companies that need the seat filled properly before they can afford to fill it Day rate or monthly retainer

Agentic Operations

Six to ten weeks · Build and handover

Standing up your own agentic delivery capability, in your own repositories, on your own systems. This practice runs on one, which is why it can hold a book of work at this size. You get the machinery, not a subscription to mine.

A working harness in your stack, scoped to named roles
Connector configuration and access boundaries
Operating cadence and the guardrails that keep it honest
Training for the people who will run it

Operators who have seen what this does and want it in-house Fixed scope, priced on outcome

Which One You Need

Two brands, deliberately separate.

I run an advisory practice under my own name and an execution practice under Aude. They are not the same purchase, and blurring them serves nobody. The test is simple: are you buying a judgment or a delivery?

This Practice

Aude Consulting

You need something built, run, or fixed, and you need it to still work later.

What you buy: Delivery
Typical form: Diagnostic, build sprint, fractional executive engagement
What you receive: An artefact that ships and a function that runs

The Other One

Haden Kirkpatrick

You need a view, a challenge in the room, or a name on the board.

What you buy: Judgment
Typical form: Non-executive seat, board counsel, advisory retainer, diligence
What you receive: A view you can act on and be challenged on

hadenkirkpatrick.co.uk →

Inside Any Engagement

Four moves, in this order, whichever shape you bought.

01 — Scope

Name the problem properly

A week of getting to the real question, which is rarely the one in the brief. Ends with a written scope and a definition of done.

02 — Baseline

Reconcile the numbers

Whatever is being measured, it is measured against source. Most engagements find at least one number the business has been running on that is wrong.

03 — Build

Make the thing

The artefact gets built, tested against the acceptance criteria, and put in front of the people who will have to live with it.

04 — Hand over

Leave it running

Documentation, a run-book, and the training to operate it. The engagement is finished when your team no longer needs me for it.

The Record

Where this comes from.

$1.8bn

Business unit built from the first policy sold, at an 88% combined ratio

136 pts

Loss ratio improvement on a turnaround, inside eighteen months

$6bn

Largest P&L carried, as a business-unit general manager

20 yrs

Operating in insurance, insurtech, fintech, and mobility

Fractional Executive

US auto telematics MGA

2026

Building the Growth Function, Not Advising On It

A telematics MGA with a product that worked and no repeatable way to sell it. The brief was not to recommend a growth strategy. It was to build the function that produces growth, and to leave it running.

Engagement live · outcomes reported when the term completes

Read the story →

Interim Executive

US AI and sensing company

2026

Selling Into Insurance for the First Time

A company with genuinely differentiated sensing technology, a strong record in adjacent markets, and no idea how insurance buys. Insurance does not buy like other enterprise categories, and the ways it differs are the ways that kill deals.

Engagement live · outcomes reported when the term completes

Read the story →

Build Sprint

Spirits brand, bridge round

2026

An Investor Funnel Built as a System

A founder-led raise being run the way most founder-led raises are run: from a spreadsheet, on memory, through whoever happened to reply. The brief was to replace that with something that would still work after this round closed.

Engagement live · outcomes reported when the round closes

Read the story →

Before The Practice

Before the practice took this shape, twenty years operating inside the kinds of business Aude now works for. That is career history rather than Aude delivery, so the detail lives under my own name.

Built a $1.8bn business unit from the first policy sold, at an 88% combined ratio — the most profitable unit in the company · A top-three US personal lines insurer
Took a 123% combined ratio to 97% and the first profit in the company’s history, worth roughly $313m in EBITDA · A US digital-native personal lines carrier
Cut acquisition cost by 94%, from about $1,900 to $118 a policy, and the loss ratio by 136 points, inside eighteen months · A carrier-backed insurtech subsidiary
Identified twelve generative-AI use cases and deployed the eight that were ROI-accretive, on track to roughly $900m NPV at scale · A top-three US personal lines insurer
Grew a business unit from $250m to $6bn in four years · A US mobile network operator
Ran a $200m corporate venture fund · A top-three US personal lines insurer

The full record at hadenkirkpatrick.co.uk →

Straight Answers

The questions that come up on every first call.

The questions that get asked on every first call, answered here instead of on the third one.

What does an engagement cost?

Fees are quoted at scoping, not published. A Growth Diagnostic is a fixed fee against a fixed three-week scope. Build Sprints and Agentic Operations are priced on the outcome, against acceptance criteria agreed before anything starts. Fractional Executive engagements run on a day rate or a monthly retainer. You get the number before you get a proposal.

What happens if the diagnostic says do nothing?

Then it says do nothing, and the engagement ends cleanly. A Growth Diagnostic is built to convert into a longer engagement or to finish — both are acceptable outcomes and the fee is the same either way. A diagnostic that can only ever conclude "hire me" is a sales call with an invoice attached.

Who actually does the work?

I do. This is a single-principal practice, and the person you meet on the first call is the person in the working sessions. What makes that hold at this volume is machinery rather than juniors: the practice runs on agentic systems that carry the research, drafting and reporting load, which is also the capability sold as Agentic Operations.

How is this different from hiring a strategy consultancy?

A strategy house sells a recommendation. Aude sells the thing that ships. Every engagement produces an artefact that runs or a function that operates, and the test of whether it worked is whether it is still running after I have gone. That is a narrower promise, and it is why the work is scoped and priced the way it is.

Which entity will I contract with?

That follows your jurisdiction. UK and EU clients contract with AUDE CONSULTING SERVICES LTD, registered in England and Wales, company number 17283094, and are invoiced in GBP. US clients contract with Aude Consulting, LLC, an Indiana limited liability company, and are invoiced in USD. Both are the same practice and the same principal.

Do you work with competing companies?

Not at the same time, in the same market, on the same problem. Beyond that, sector experience is the reason to hire a practice this specialised, so adjacent work is normal and is disclosed before an engagement starts. Client work stays inside that client’s systems and is never used as material for another.

Why are your case studies anonymous?

Because permission has not been asked for yet, and publishing a client name without it is a poor way to treat one. Engagements are described by shape — a US auto telematics MGA, a US AI and sensing company, a spirits brand raising a bridge round. Names get added as clients agree to them, not before.

Do you only work in insurance?

The functions are grounded in insurance, insurtech, fintech and mobility, and that is where the pattern recognition is worth paying for. Agentic Operations is the exception: standing up an agentic delivery capability is sector-agnostic, and that work has been done outside the insurance stack.

What is the difference between Aude Consulting and Haden Kirkpatrick?

They are the same person and two different purchases. Aude is the execution arm — diagnostics, builds, and fractional executive engagements that ship. hadenkirkpatrick.co.uk is the judgment side — non-executive directorships, board counsel, advisory, and commercial diligence for funds. Work that straddles both is split deliberately rather than blurred to win the whole.

The Aude Letter

An occasional letter on where insurance and its adjacent technology is actually going, written from inside the operating seat.

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Tell me what is not working. If Aude is the wrong practice for it, I will say so in the first call rather than the third.

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