Dubai, United Arab Emirates
Program & Transformation Leader with 20+ years of experience delivering complex, multi-million-dollar banking and digital transformation programs across Europe, the Middle East, Asia, and the Americas. My expertise spans core banking modernisation, regulatory reporting, and digital financial services, with a proven record of turning around failing programs, engaging C-suite stakeholders, leading distributed global teams to successful delivery. Having worked with leading banks and consultancies including Standard Chartered, Morgan Stanley, Société Générale, ABN Amro, Accenture and Cap Gemini, I bring both vendor-side and client-side insight to ensure measurable ROI, adoption, and compliance in highly regulated environments. KEY HIGHLIGHTS: Core Banking Transformation: 14 end-to-end implementations (Transact, Finacle, card/payments systems) Team Leadership: Successfully managed on-site and remote, multi-vendor, cross-border delivery teams across 5 continents Regulatory Programs: Basel II, AnaCredit, CBPR+, and digital compliance initiatives with seamless E2E reporting EXPERTISE: Transactional & Digital Banking; Financial Acumen; Project/Program Management; Project Implementation (end-to-end); Project Methodologies; RFI/RFP/SOW & Commercial Negotiation; Risk & Issue Management; Problem Management; Project Change Management; Product Development & Delivery; Data Migration & Data Conversion; Integration and Third-Party Integration; Business Operations; Business Process Management; Continuous Improvement & Optimisation; Reporting; Relationship Management; Vendor Management
• Managing program and project teams to ensure completion on time and within budget • Devising evaluation strategies for monitoring performance and determining the requirements for improvements. • Identifying potential risks and threats to current and future programs, in collaboration with senior management • Producing program reports for department heads, directors, end users and other stakeholders • Planning future program activity, including consultations with project sponsors, analysis of requirements and arranging timeframes
• Led the start-up phase for a UK-headquartered digital transformation consultancy for its Gulf operations, with a focus on banking and financial services clients • Developed and presented pitch decks and tailored proposals in response to RFPs for digital transformation programs, resulting in $6.5M USD of new business in August alone. • Partnered with technology vendors and strategic alliances to assess commercial models, margins, and pricing strategies • Conducted market engagement meetings with potential clients and partners, building early opportunity pipelines. • Contributed to go-to-market strategy and proposition design while providing delivery governance input to ensure proposals were operationally achievable. • Established delivery governance, PMO processes, and client engagement frameworks to support financial sector transformation projects. • Engagement ended as funding was withdrawn and team released.
Managing a portfolio of projects for a Saudi Finance company offering a range of Sharia-complaint products to the local market, using the TMN Products, Infinity and Transact, to develop their product offering within their mobile application, launched in March 2023. Managing Credit Card project, consisting of multiple vendors: eMcREY (Card Management System), Thales (Card Production), Visa (Card Certifications) and client. Responsible for development of the app and also all aspects of integration, API’s, and microservices, testing and release. Developed detailed integrated plan for all parties/vendors for governance/monitoring Resolved delays on in-flight projects Completed testing phases Released deliveries into production Managed vendors for integrated card solution
• Converted from TAFC to TAFJ and migrated modules from AC/LD to AA and from FT to TPH. Configured branches for CBPR with MX/pac008/9 for all payments messages. • Managed and co-ordinated testing support. All test scenarios, and cases setup in JIRA, covering customer, lending, deposit, trade finance, letters of credit, payments, all advices and confirmations, accounting and regulatory reporting. Detailed trackers designed and setup for effort sizing, resourcing and subsequent testing schedule. • Regulatory solution required multiple additional fields and logic to be applied within Transact and Temenos Data Lake, with data being extracted and uploaded to Wolters Kluwer reporting system to produce Basel II, AnaCredit and Schema A regulatory reporting. • For testing, firstly the base and additional functionality and logic were validated, and secondly, data cuts taken from production to test the additional logics and extractions from Transact to TDL and subsequently, TDL to Wolters Kluwer. • Detailed scenarios and reviews/validation were conducted to prove the E-2-E regulatory reporting process. • Associated defect and environment processes established and embedded, to facilitate efficient testing management and progression. Lead solutioning and delivery for regulatory reporting Identified and delivered work arounds for Trade Finance SWIFT MX payments Provided detailed plan for migration/cut-over to ensure good progress for workstream Developed and delivered testing management approach for all advices and confirmations
Program Manager at Bank Leumi PMO • Conducted core banking implementation vendor selection review for the following streams: implementation, migration, testing and cleansing. • Created detailed program plan and established governance framework and directed project managers to apply quality, change, release, vendor, finance/budgetary and scope management processes. • Monitored and tracked Temenos in flight projects through regular meetings/updates and issue resolution. Projects comprised: • Iris X migration – API documentation, design, migration war testing, and regression testing. Data Framework – design, environments creation, RR & DLM installation, and testing. • Online Installation – design, POC online installation mechanism, dev ops updates, testing. • Implementing DS packager and updating dev ops. • Sonar Plug in – Installation and configuration. End of day (COB) processing improvements. • Defined and identified data inputs, calculation, and frequency for Program KPI’s, consisting of Strategic, Progress and Quality KPI’s.