Management Strategy Advisory Ltd draws on a pool of seasoned professionals in the fields of financial services, financial management, debt management, accounting, tax, information technology, project management, business and institutional development, strategy and capacity building. These resources have executive level experience in both local and international blue-chip environments and in the private and public sector. They are proven business managers with track records of success.
Please see the profiles of the main consultants:
Mrs Funmi Ilamah – Managing Partner
Funmi Ilamah is a financial management, strategy and institutional development specialist with over thirty-five years’ experience in both the Public Sector and Private Sector, in local and international blue-chip companies.
She has extensive experience in financial management and the delivery of business solutions, with core competences in financial management, public financial management, debt management including capital market development, strategy development, institutional development, governance, audit, controls and systems development and capacity building, amongst others.
Funmi has consulted in the capacity of Reform Leader in the Enabling Business Environment Secretariat (EBES) of the Presidential Enabling Business Environment Council (PEBEC), to pull down the barriers impeding the ease of doing business in Nigeria. She was responsible for the credit reform that contributed most to moving Nigeria up 24 places in the 2018 World Bank Ease of Doing Business global rankings, and successfully moved Nigeria to the 6th out of 190 countries in the world in the “Getting Credit” reform. She successfully facilitated the signing into law of two key Acts of Government that will enable more access to affordable credit, especially for MSMEs, as well as successfully implementing local content, procurement, insurance and legislative reforms. She correspondingly acted as Technical Adviser on the Subnational Ease of Doing Business reforms that devolve the reforms down to the States, and also as Technical Adviser to the Honourable Minister of Industry, Trade and Investment on Competition law and the establishment of the Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Commission.
She was a member of Executive Management at the Debt Management Office (DMO) of Nigeria, a financial reform agency of the Federal Government of Nigeria responsible for the management of the country’s debt portfolio and the development of a viable Capital Market. While at the DMO, she was responsible for developing and implementing policies that resulted in major changes in Debt Management and the Capital Market in particular, and Financial Public Management in general. She began her stint at the DMO as the Director, Policy Strategy and Risk Management (the Middle Office), then headed the Back Office as Director Debt Data Recording and Settlements, before heading the agency’s new Strategic Programme flagship project of devolving debt management capabilities and institutions down to the states, as Director Strategic Programmes Department (Front Office).
Whilst with the DMO, she served on various committees including the Presidential Committee on Consumer Credit, ID Management and Outsourcing; the Presidential Committee on Mortgage Financing; the Presidential Committee on the Revival of the Textile Industry; the Presidential Committee on Lagos Mass Rail Transit (part of Lagos Megacity Development); the OECD African Debt Managers Steering Committee; the DMO/ DFID Project Steering Committee and various others that impacted on national development, and federal and sub-national public financial management .
Prior to joining the DMO, she was the Financial Controller of Citibank Nigeria. She also spent thirteen years working in the finance and strategy/ business development functions in various blue-chip companies in the United Kingdom, including The Chef and Brewer Group (part of Grand Metropolitan), Polygram Filmed Entertainment International (now Universal Studios), Reed Exhibitions (part of Reed Elsevier) and Security Pacific Hoare Govett, an American investment bank.
Funmi Ilamah is a Fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Nigeria, a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants, UK and has a Master’s in Business Administration (MBA) degree from the University of Lagos. She has attended several courses in prestigious institutions, including the London Business School and INSEAD, France. She serves on a number of boards, including Stanbic IBTC Capital Ltd as an Independent Non-Executive Director.
