Ragesh RAVEENDRAN NAIR
Burgess Hill,England
Summary
Strategic Consultant with 9 years’ experience currently helping FSI Leaders drive growth through thought leadership and transformation of complex operations into compliant, risk-resilient delivery models.
- Combines 5 years of BFS consulting experience (strategic intelligence, operational efficiency, enterprise change) with 4 years on-the-ground banking experience at HSBC and Bajaj Finance (Largest NBFC in India) across Lending, Payments, Trade and 1LoD Regulatory Risk.
- Currently Process & Product Liaison (MarOps) at client site - American Express, aligning global marketing, operations and engineering teams to deliver change within compliance guardrails.
- Strengths include change execution, operational risk mitigation, and developing client-facing thought leadership artefacts.
Overview
10
10
years of professional experience
Work history
Senior Consultant
Cognizant
Onsite at Amex, Sussex House, Mar'25 onwards, UK & India
2024.04 - Current
- MarOps Transformation: Serving as process and product liaison - content ops for an enterprise-wide marketing migration ensuring workflows are compliant.
- Backlog & Requirement Management: Translating high-level requirements into prioritised user stories and technical specifications for development teams.
- Product Workflow Design: Owned end-to-end design and implementation of new intake workflow partnering with development teams, directly reducing operation risk, and potential customer harm.
- Risk & Governance: Mitigated operational risk by implementing fully systemic approval workflow, transitioning ~40% offline compliance approvals online. Supported closure of high-priority Operational Risk Events through root cause analysis and enhanced control design.
- Stakeholder Management: Acted as trusted partner to Client Director, owning programme health tracking, leadership reporting, and delivering complex target operating models, process maps, RACIs.
- Thought Leadership: Authored multiple targeted PoVs used to drive executive-level client strategy. Selected by FCA to collaborate on 2026 FCA Stablecoin Sprint, mapping B2B/Retail business models to inform UK regulation.
- Practice Development: Spearheaded case-study led engagements achieved ~8% revenue increase within key client programme. Building Payments GRC capabilities.
Senior Analyst – BFSI Research
Cognizant
Hyderabad, India
2020.12 - 2024.03
- Strategic Thought Leadership: Produced high-value POVs, reports, and strategy collaterals on Payments, Mortgages, Insurance, and Product Strategy consumed by clients and senior leadership.
- Product Benchmarking: Led exhaustive research and competitive analysis to support client advisory.
- Strategic Capability Enhancement: Modernised research infrastructure by evaluating and onboarding AlphaSense to support enterprise intelligence. Championed GenAI tools and capability adoption, trained team to achieve ~30% average reduction in turnaround time.
- Operational Excellence: Project and resource tracking for billing and reporting purposes. Mentoring junior analysts, scaling team’s analytical speed and quality.
Relationship Manager – Commercial Banking
HSBC
Chennai, India
2018.04 - 2020.12
- Trade & Supply Chain Finance: Managed a complex trade portfolio including LCs, SBLCs, Bill discounting, and Import / Export payment structures.
- International Payments: Oversaw end to end execution of Inward and Outward Remittances, ensuring timely and error-free processing of cross border transactions.
- Digital Focus: Aligned with bank’s “Digital First” strategy to achieve ~90% digital adoption across trade portfolio. Collaborated with tech teams to solution and deploy Corporate/Virtual Card use cases.
- 1LoD Regulatory Rigor: Handled end to end onboarding and transaction monitoring, resolved complex layered UBO patterns and account remediations to ensure global AML/KYC compliance.
- Portfolio Growth: Orchestrated acquisition and servicing of commercial banking clients (Liabilities), consistently achieving revenue targets.
Sales Manager - Business Loans
Bajaj Finance Limited
Bangalore, India
2017.05 - 2018.03
- End to End Lending Operations: Directed loan origination and servicing lifecycle for unsecured MSME lending products, partnering with Credit, Risk, and Branch Ops to maintain low delinquency.
- Front Line Compliance: Performed stringent KYC/AML verifications at point of sale, acting as first line of defence against identity fraud and financial crime.
- Product Growth Optimisation: Partnered with Product and Analytics teams to localise SMS campaigns into regional language, and refine UI for improved data capture achieved 20% increase in CTR, and drove ~9% uplift in lead to sale conversion integrating real-time field-unit follow up.
- Team Leadership: Led a high-performing team of 4 sales executives to drive Direct to Customer acquisitions, maintaining focus on disbursal speed and customer satisfaction.
Summer Intern
Bajaj Finance Limited
Pune, India
2016.04 - 2016.05
- IFA Channel Strategy: Developed a validated roadmap to scale IFA activation from 22% to 70% by resolving friction points identified via gap analysis. Executed competitor analysis backed empanelment strategies. Performance resulted in an early permanant offer.
Education
Post Graduate Diploma in Management - Marketing Majors
Institute of Financial Management and Research
Nellore /2015 - /2017
Bachelor of Technology - Computer Science
Mohandas College of Engineering and Technology, Kerala Uni.
Thiruvananthapuram /2010 - /2014
Skills
- Domains: Cards & Payments, MarOps, 1st Line of Defence (1LoD), Business Banking, Trade Finance
- Functional Delivery: Requirement Elicitation, Backlog Grooming, UAT and Test Case preparation, Process Mapping, Impact Analysis, Programme Management
- Strategic Insights: Thought Leadership (PoVs), Competitor Benchmarking, Market & Regulatory Research, Operating Model Design, Product Benchmarking
- Methodologies: Agile (Scrum/Kanban), Waterfall, SDLC
- Tools & Platforms: MarketingForce / Salesforce, JIRA, Confluence, Mural, Visio, Excel, GenAI Tools (LLM Prompt Engineering), FactSet, AlphaSense, IDC
- Certifications: Certified SAFe Product Owner/Product Manager (2024)
Affiliations
- Trekking: Completed the Seven Sisters coastal hike. Summited Ali Bedni Bugyal (12,500ft).
- Travelling: Backpacked across India covering 18 states.
Right to Work
UK Resident | Global Mobility Visa (Sponsored by Cognizant)
Timeline
Senior Consultant
Cognizant
2024.04 - Current
Senior Analyst – BFSI Research
Cognizant
2020.12 - 2024.03
Relationship Manager – Commercial Banking
HSBC
2018.04 - 2020.12
Sales Manager - Business Loans
Bajaj Finance Limited
2017.05 - 2018.03
Summer Intern
Bajaj Finance Limited
2016.04 - 2016.05
Post Graduate Diploma in Management - Marketing Majors
Institute of Financial Management and Research
/2015 - /2017
Bachelor of Technology - Computer Science
Mohandas College of Engineering and Technology, Kerala Uni.
/2010 - /2014