Data Scientist
Summary
8 years of data science and advanced analytics experience in the financial services industry, seeking exposure in other domains.
Education
London Metropolitan University, London, United Feb 2006 – Mar 2008
M.Sc. International Banking and Finance
Middlesex University, London, United Sep 2004 – Feb 2006
B.Sc. (Hons.) Business Information Systems with IT
Experience
Tez Financial Services (formerly KreditGeek), Lahore, Pakistan Oct 2016 – May 2017
Co-Founder & Chief Technology Officer
- Developed concept paper, business plan and financial model for digital lending product.
- Conducted requirements gathering and defined project scope in coordination with executive management and business units.
- Formulated business processes to lay out system and user interface design.
- Carried out product development by coordinating with internal teams, technology partners and external parties (including financial institutions).
- Initiated enhancement of business functionalities and change requests of business systems and platforms in coordination with cross-functional teams.
- Conducted and coordinated User Acceptance Testing (UAT) for developed solutions.
- Managed cross-functional teams for planning, implementation and end-to-end delivery of products.
- Ensured support & maintenance of the services/solutions in place by liaising with responsible parties.
- Responsible for budgeting and financial reporting to investors and Group management team.
- Liaised with regulators and external stakeholders for customer identity verification, credit bureaus and payment service providers, including negotiating and finalizing agreements with solution providers.
- Regularly communicated project timelines and progress to stakeholders.
- Featured on Thomson Reuters’ ZAYWA, Salaam Gateway and mysalaam news sites.
- Shortlisted in Top 8 for USD 100,000 grant at Karandaaz Fintech Disrupt Challenge 2017.
- Won ‘Best Idea Stage Startup Award’ at Startup Rumble 2017.
- Won ‘Support Disruption for Good Award’ at Responsible Finance and Investment Summit 2017.
Telenor, Islamabad, Pakistan Mar 2015 – Oct 2016
Assistant Manager Credit Analytics – Financial Services
- Managed end-to-end advanced analytics lifecycle for financial services division, overseeing model development, validation and deployment efforts.
- Formulated credit strategies for unsecured mobile lending portfolios to strengthen credit risk management and assist on business growth.
- Ensured compliance of model development and validation with Group guidelines.
- Created reproducible documents for credit scoring and other predictive models for audit and knowledge sharing.
- Liaised with software vendors and cross-functional teams for deployment of data mining platform (Dell Statistica).
- Collaborated with Business Intelligence team to identify new sources of data and continue to improve the process of defining, extracting and utilizing the new data.
- Developed relationships with business and support units for expanding scope of advanced analytics.
- Contributed to portfolio reports, presented to senior management.
- Provided hands-on training and knowledge transfer on data science to business units.
- Contributed to internal technical forums.
- Developed credit-scoring models for branchless banking and telco customers.
- Used machine-learning techniques to maximize model accuracy and robustness.
- Identified target customer base for maximizing take-up of international remittance product.
- Maintained regular reporting on business and scorecard performance.
- Recognized and awarded for hard work and commitment within first 3 months of service.
- Promoted within 1 year of service in recognition of performance and expertise.
Allied Bank Limited, Lahore, Pakistan Jun 2009 – Mar 2015
Market Risk Analyst – Treasury Middle Office (Jul 2012 – Mar 2015)
- Developed Value-at-Risk models to quantify equity, foreign exchange and interest rate risk.
- Performed ongoing back-testing of deployed models post successful implementation.
- Conducted stress testing on investment portfolio, providing insights for key strategic decisions.
- Authored policies and procedures at both department and enterprise level.
- Re-engineered business processes and automated reporting activity to improve productivity.
- Participated in system audits in order to improve accuracy of portfolio valuation and risk reporting.
- Performed regular (daily/weekly/monthly/quarterly) reporting for market and liquidity risk and compiled management reports.
- Quantified market risk based on industry best practices (Basel).
- Established and maintained strong working relationships with various departments.
- Promoted to Assistant Vice President in recognition of performance and expertise.
Credit Risk Analyst – Regional Commercial & Retail Risk (Apr 2011 – May 2011)
- Reviewed SME borrower applications, assessing financial capacity and willingness to service debt.
Risk Analyst – Credit Modelling Unit (Jun 2009 – Apr 2011) (Jun 2011 – Jul 2012)
- Developed corporate risk rating models for manufacturing concerns, trading concerns, service providers, commercial banks, non-banking financial institutions, asset management companies, insurance companies and brokerage houses.
- Liaised with IT for operationalization of credit scorecards in production environment.
- Performed user acceptance testing (UAT) for deployed credit models.
- Reviewed and validated risk-rating models, scorecards on ongoing basis.
- Supported Head Enterprise Risk Management with various ad-hoc assignments.
- Promoted within 1 year of service in recognition of performance and professional commitment.
ABN AMRO Bank, Lahore, Pakistan Jun 2006 – Jul 2006
Intern – Corporate Portfolio Management
Beaconhouse Informatics, Lahore, Pakistan May 2003 – Aug 2003
Teaching Assistant – ‘C Programming’ and ‘Data Structures with C’
Skills
- R, VBA, MS Excel
Spoken Languages
- English, Hindi, Persian, Punjabi, Urdu