About ULV . About Nik

Built from inside loyalty programs.

Loyalty business builder. Transformation leader.

Urban Leopard Ventures is led by Nik Laming — a commercial loyalty leader who has built, launched, run and transformed loyalty programs across airlines and beyond.
Nik Laming, founder of Urban Leopard Ventures
The Founder

Nik Laming

A commercial loyalty leader who has built, launched and run loyalty programs from inside organisations.

Nik joined Cebu Pacific before launch as employee number one in the loyalty business. He designed the program, built the organisation and the partner book, and ran it commercially and operationally — across commercial, partnerships, analytics, member service, technology, marketing and finance, with full P&L responsibility.

He went on to help architect the evolution of the wider JG Summit loyalty assets — including the eventual integration with Robinsons Retail — into DAVI, the regional data analytics and loyalty business.

Nik’s loyalty heritage before Cebu Pacific spans more than a decade in service-provider and consulting roles. He was SVP at Aimia, leading the Asia business and advising loyalty programs of every shape — airlines, coalition, retail, banking and beyond. Before Aimia’s acquisition, he held the same role at Carlson Marketing, also based in Singapore. Before that he was Business Management Director at Carlson Marketing Australia.

Since founding ULV in 2020, he has worked on more than fifteen airline loyalty programs since 2020, alongside selected work in retail and coalition loyalty, banking, payments, hospitality and B2B. The common thread is being brought in during periods of significant commercial or operational change — a launch, a relaunch, a leadership gap, a commercial reset.

Some of this is delivered directly by ULV. Some sits inside larger advisory engagements delivered alongside global consulting, payments and advisory organisations. Much of it is confidential.

Nik has lived and worked in the United Kingdom, Australia, Singapore, Saudi Arabia, Vietnam and the Philippines. He works with On Point Loyalty on selected engagements, and is the founder of Loyalty ConnectOS, a separate Manila-based business that helps organisations build their own loyalty, data and digital teams.
How we think about loyalty

Observations from twenty years inside the work.

01

Keep complexity behind the scenes.

Customers should not need to study rules to understand value. The best loyalty experiences feel simple because the hard work happens behind the scenes.

02

Design around behaviour, not internal structures.

Good loyalty programs fit naturally into how customers already travel, spend, shop and live. Programs designed around internal silos rarely do.

03

Align loyalty with commercial reality.

The strongest programs work because loyalty, finance, RM and partnerships are aligned. Speak all four languages, or the program drifts.

04

Make loyalty enjoyable.

Progress, recognition and simplicity matter more than complicated mechanics. Customers come back to programs they like using.

05

Build things that can actually operate.

A strategy only matters if the business can realistically execute it. The hardest part is rarely the idea — it is making change work inside a live business while it still has to run tomorrow morning.

Where we work

ULV operates globally, with deep concentration in Asia-Pacific and an active footprint across Europe, the Middle East and North America. Nik has lived and worked in six countries on three continents. The team draws on operators, consultants and delivery talent in Singapore, Manila, London and across the globe.

SELECTED ENGAGEMENTS

Selected work — what we do, anonymised by design

Client detail stays confidential. What follows is the shape of the work.
Below: a small set of anonymised engagement examples that illustrate the kind of work Nik and the ULV team are typically called in to do.

01

Asia Pacific airline

Acting head of loyalty

Scope: full program review. Plan to move loyalty from cost centre to commercial business. Five-year roadmap, corporate structure recommendation and board paper.

Role: embedded acting leadership inside the loyalty team.

02

Middle Eastern carrier

Greenfield loyalty build

Scope: hands-on build support across CVP, technology, partnerships and innovative cobrand design. Solving airline-retailing complexity: no PNR, no RBD, full dynamic inventory, partnerships with legacy-system carriers, new lifestyle partnerships across hospitality, retail, cinema and ride-hailing.

Role: embedded consultant. Leading partnership effort.

03

Major European hospitality group

Program economics and redesign

Scope: benchmarking against peer hotel programs, customer segmentation, financial modelling, full program redesign. Program economics, partnerships and cobrand, value proposition, tiering and benefits, integration with subscription and holiday-club products, detailed review of the cobrand card deal. Output: a redesign proposal backed by a financial model and an implementation roadmap.

Role: senior consultant with the On Point Loyalty team.

04

Southeast Asian airline and conglomerate

Loyalty, data and digital business build

Scope: nine months embedded with the group loyalty, data and digital team. Program design, partnership strategy across conglomerate companies, value-proposition build, technology selection.

Role: embedded as part of an On Point Loyalty engagement.

05

North American LCC

Program design and long-term adviser

Scope: initial program design and launch as part of the design team. Two-year advisory role to CLO and CEO that followed — team structure and skill set, cobrand and partnerships, KPIs, roadmap, annual two-day workshops covering every aspect of program development.

Role: senior consultant with the On Point Loyalty team, then ongoing adviser.

06

Asia Pacific airline

Program revamp and relaunch

Scope: two phases. Phase one — relaunch of the loyalty program — value proposition redesign, LMS technology integration, migration and integration of sister-airline programs, revenue-based accrual, expanded redemption. Shifting how the CCO and revenue management team perceive loyalty. Phase two — cobrand strategy and next-generation card products, RFP design for issuers.

Role: senior consultant with the On Point Loyalty team.

07

Asia Pacific carrier

Multi-phase program revamp

Scope: two-year multi-phase program revamp. Major value-proposition change including tiering, program financials and valuation. Supported the selection process for new LMS technology. Socialised with senior leadership across the airline.

Role: subject-matter expert embedded inside a major global payments advisory team.

08

Asia Pacific airline

Full program revamp planning

Scope: full program redesign planning — technology, tiering and the business case. Built and presented the case and plan to the CCO and CEO on behalf of the loyalty team.

Role: loyalty subject-matter expert embedded inside a major global consulting team.

09

Southeast Asian LCC

Foundational program build and carve-out

Scope: employee number one in the loyalty business. Designed, built, launched and ran the program from a standing start. Built the team, the partner book and the P&L. Later part of the leadership team that carved the program out into a standalone loyalty, data and digital business.

Role: Founding loyalty leader. Hands-on across commercial, partnerships, analytics, member service, technology, marketing, finance — and full P&L responsibility.

Detailed credentials, including named engagements, are available on request under NDA

Who we work with

On Point Loyalty is an independent consulting and investment advisory firm focused on airline loyalty. Nik has worked as a consultant on On Point client engagements. Where an assignment needs specialist financial modelling, loyalty economics, valuation or quantitative program design, ULV works with On Point. The two businesses are independent of each other.

Loyalty ConnectOS

A separate business Nik founded, based in Manila. Loyalty ConnectOS helps organisations build their own loyalty, data and digital teams — specialists employed directly by the client, working as part of the client’s organisation with resources based in the Philippines. 

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