README.md

Ashutosh Pathak

Programme & Delivery Director, Financial Services

Programme and delivery director with 25 years in banking technology across NatWest, Standard Chartered, DBS and Citi, spanning eight countries and four continents.

London, UK Open to Director / Programme Manager roles Financial Services

25+years delivery

$60M+portfolio at Standard Chartered

45people, 5 teams

22→12days: release cycle, delivered

⬇ resume.pdf 🔗 linkedin

Selected outcomes

Delivered work and current work are tagged separately.

delivered Engineering velocity: release cycle time cut from 22 days to <12 days, quarterly to fortnightly, via reusable GitLab CI/CD pipeline templates in PCF with dedicated SIT/UAT(regression)/NFT environments.
delivered, a first for the bank Zero-downtime deployment: Blue-Green deployment retired the weekend release window. Availability held above 99% throughout.
delivered Regulatory: audit findings closed with internal audit, EY, KPMG, Navigant, MAS and RBI across a $60M+ portfolio.
delivered Delivery governance: SDLC governance (Agile + Waterfall), RAID ownership and release-train coordination across 5 concurrent teams, 45 professionals.
delivered Quality: manual regression replaced by a full Selenium/Gherkin-BDD suite across every servicing journey.
in-progress Platform modernisation: phased migration from an on-premises PaaS environment to AWS, journey by journey.
in-progress, migrating Mandates servicing journey: already live, processed largely manually today at ~730 requests/day (6,000 to 7,000 over two weeks), supporting a team of ~70 people, split across two fragmented legacy platforms. Migrating onto a single unified AI-enabled platform on AWS, not yet live in production. Platform-wide target: 70,000+ requests/month, 50%+ FTE reduction.

Signature build, in progress

Mandates: migrating a live, high-volume journey onto a unified AI-enabled platform

Customers add, remove, update or view signatories on business accounts. This journey is already live and processed largely manually today, split across two disconnected legacy platforms. The migration now underway moves it onto one unified platform where each request routes through an AI-enabled workflow.

~730/daymanual volume today

6K to 7Kover a two-week period

~70people supporting it today

# servicing-journey.workflow (migration in progress, not yet in production)
Request received
  → Data extracted from request
  → Account & authoriser lookup
  → OCR + signature match
  → E-sign confirmation
  → Automated validation agents
  → External register checks
  → Human review (HITL)
  → Downstream fulfilment

Migration phasing (incremental, independently releasable)

Government-backed securities, single-party mandates first, then multi-party. Then Commercial Banking incorporated entities, then every Commercial Banking flow. Business Banking last.

No data or process migration between platforms: a case already open on a legacy platform finishes there. New cases start on the unified platform. Legacy systems retire once migration completes.

Two-tier automation model, once scaled (target)

Incorporated companies: full straight-through processing based on signature verification plus automated Companies House lookup.

Unincorporated companies: full automation up to a final human-in-the-loop check.

Target: 70,000+ requests/month once scaled across the platform, target: 50%+ FTE reduction. Not yet achieved.

Experience

NatWest GroupDec 2023 to present · London

Director / Programme Manager, Business & Technology Transformation

Programme manager for NatWest's full C&I Banking servicing platform, covering Mandates, Cards, Payment Queries, Cheques, ePrivacy and Change of Business Details, leading 5 concurrent Agile teams (~45 professionals).
Cut release cycle time from 22 days to under 12 via GitLab CI/CD and the bank's first Blue-Green deployment.
Leading migration of Mandates, an already-live, high-volume servicing journey processing around 730 requests a day (roughly 6,000 to 7,000 over a two-week period), supported by a team of around 70 people, from two fragmented legacy platforms onto a single unified AI-enabled platform. Phased incrementally by segment, no data migration between platforms. Not yet live in production.
Running the phased AWS migration, cutting over one journey at a time.

Tata Consultancy ServicesFeb 2022 to Dec 2023

Project Manager / Release Train Manager, CIM (client: NatWest)

Relocated from Singapore to the UK in 2022. Joined NatWest through this contract before moving into a permanent Director role.

Delivered the foundational Customer Identification Management capability, creating unique Party IDs for primary and related parties, linked to Legal Entity IDs and source systems.
Moved the bank toward a consistent enterprise approach for identifying customers and related parties, laying the foundation for later relationship and hierarchy capabilities.

Standard Chartered BankMay 2015 to Feb 2022 · Singapore

Executive Director / Programme Manager, Technology & Innovation

Directed a $60M+ portfolio (20M+ clients) across CRA, RPDM, BPSI and an ESG initiative.
Modernised the CRA financial-crime risk engine, covering PEP, sanctions, AML and adverse media.
Closed audit and regulatory findings with internal audit, EY, KPMG, Navigant, MAS and RBI.

DBS BankFeb 2012 to May 2015 · Singapore

Senior Business Analyst / Transformation Lead, Institutional Banking

Built and specified OSCA, a credit rating platform for DBS's Bank Model (rating bank and financial-institution counterparties) under the Risk Management Group, integrating a separate computation engine (CSM, on Tibco BusinessWorks), financial-statement spreading via MRA, and external agency ratings (Fitch, Moody's, S&P) via GCS.
Personally authored the detailed UI and workflow spec (RM-facing mockups, v3.0) for a seven-tab rating workflow: pre-processing, Initial CRR financial/non-financial (25 qualitative factors, 5 mandatory), Early Warning Signals, Specific Default Indicators, Supported CRR with government/parent support-matrix logic, and final Adjusted CRR with RM override commentary.
Rewrote the Facility Risk Rating spec over ~1 year, migrating FIRB to AIRB (LGD, PD, EAD, RWA).
Drove build, SIT, UAT and go-live across a $7.5M MAS-aligned portfolio, six Asian markets.

CitibankOct 2010 to Feb 2012 · Singapore

Transformation Functional Lead, Global Customer Repository

Led functional transformation for a $30M programme across 26 countries.
Gave the bank a single, trusted view of each customer across businesses and products, replacing fragmented records.
Supported downstream KYC and regulatory reporting through consistent customer identification standards.

ABSA, Citibank (Nordics), earlier careerMay 2001 to Aug 2010

Business Analyst roles, in Johannesburg, Stockholm and India

ABSA Bank: Flexcube core-banking re-platforming, Tanzania and Mozambique.
Citibank Nordics: digital banking BA, four Nordic markets.
Deutsche Bank, ICICI Bank, Standard Chartered India, Ajuba Solutions: branch banking, SWIFT wire transfer operations.

Education and credentials

Type	Detail
Education	Bachelor of Engineering, University of Mumbai
Certification	Certified ScrumMaster (CSM), Scrum Alliance, 2018
In progress	AWS Certified AI Practitioner, expected within a few months
In progress	AWS Certified Solutions Architect, Associate, expected within a few months

Skills

Programme & delivery

Programme governanceRAIDRelease train mgmtAgileWaterfall

Technology & AI

LLM deploymentBPMN orchestrationAWS migrationCI/CD, GitLab

Governance

Exec reportingAudit engagementRemediation