It was late on a Saturday night in the fall of 2015 — a college reunion in Toronto that had thinned out to the diehards and the nostalgic.
Two friends, Derek Roy and Marcus Leung, found themselves at a corner table doing what they always did: complaining about the same broken corner of the banking industry. Derek had spent eight years inside commercial lending departments, watching institutions fumble their approach to small and mid-size business clients. Marcus had built a career on the advisory side, structuring engagements for firms that treated every bank the same regardless of size, market, or clientele. Both had seen the same pattern — generic advice, recycled playbooks, and consultants who left before any recommendations actually took hold.
The conversation moved to the parking lot of a diner at 2 a.m. Derek had the technical knowledge of commercial credit underwriting and deposit strategy. Marcus understood how to scope, sell, and deliver consulting engagements that produced measurable results instead of binder-shelf reports. They shook hands next to a rental car, split the startup costs across two credit cards, and agreed on one rule: if they ever stopped enjoying the work, they'd shut the firm down.
Six months later, in the spring of 2016, Roy Capital Ltd. opened its first engagement — a credit policy review for a Vancouver-area credit union with $180M in assets and a commercial portfolio that had flatlined for three consecutive years. Within nine months of implementing the recommendations, that institution's business lending volume grew 26%. It was the proof of concept that validated the entire premise: when a consultant actually understands the mechanics of business banking, the results follow.
A decade later, the firm has completed over 180 engagements across 47 institutions. The rule still holds. The work is still enjoyable. The credit cards have been paid off for quite some time.