Chris is an accomplished financial services professional who has worked in the Financial Services industry for 30+ as an SME in Operational Risk, Governance and Controls. Chris builds positive, long lasting stakeholder relationships and has proven leadership credentials.
Senior positions have included leading the 2nd Line Operational Risk area for Invesco Perpetual and Lead Risk Positioning Manager for Data Security at Nationwide Building Society. Chris combines his core skillset in Risk with expertise in Business Strategy, Operations and Change Management.
Most recently Chris has worked as the Risk & Audit Lead across all projects that made up the Operational Resilience Programme for Nationwide Building Society. Previous clients worked with include HSBC, Lloyds Banking Group, Capita Asset Services, Invesco Perpetual and Barclays.
Sharif is a Risk & Regulation expert with over 20 years’ experience delivering large international risk, compliance and financial crime programmes with solution-based business transformations in the Banking, Insurance, Transport and Central Government sectors. His work has spanned UK, US, Europe Far East and the Middle East.
Sharif’s recent projects for Tier 1 banks include: FCA S166 remediation, Financial Crime and anti-money laundering (AML), global risk appetite models and reporting, KYC international customer due diligence standards and cloud-based libraries. He has consulted on strategies for end-to-end traceability of global regulatory obligations such as MiFID2, Brexit, Volcker, CoI, GDPR, Ring Fencing and PSD2.
Sharif has a keen interest in risk and compliance innovation and transformation with a strategic, process and data driven mindset to deliver evidence based practical and customer centric solutions. During his career he has developed strong relationships with regulatory bodies such as the FCA, PRA, OCC, OFAC, DFSA, HKMA, MAS, OSFI, AUSTRAC and BaFin.
Michael is a chartered accountant, auditor and management consultant trained in two of the Big 4 firms. He has 22 years of experience consulting in multiple sectors and brings a wealth of expertise in operational risk, enterprise risk, audit and assurance, business analysis and process improvement.
Within the financial sector, Michael has focussed his work on RCSAs; front office regulatory projects; controls testing, design and documentation; internal and external audit; issue remediation; and special projects, including investigative due-diligence. He consults effectively to functions in all three of the Lines of Defence.
Michael has a proven track record of accelerating projects to completion on time and to budget. He created an industry-standard Risk and Controls management solution for two top-tier banks. He led a project team to achieve a smooth year-end annual audit process and created a new ‘LIBOR Centre of Excellence’ department comprising 40 people. Michael always seeks to create efficiencies for his clients and has drastically reduced reporting lead times for PPI reporting to the FCA and underwriting risk processes. He has an acute attention to detail that lends itself well to forensic investigative work and identifying suboptimal working practices, resulting in improved productivity for clients.
Michael typically consults in the following functions:
• First Line Risk and Control Management
• Non-Financial Risk Framework Management
• Front Office Controls and Conduct Change Management
• Product Control
• Compliance
• Prime Brokerage
His past clients include Credit Suisse, HSBC, Deutsche Bank, Barclays, RBS and Lloyds Banking Group.
Antonie is a Principal Consultant who has worked in leading financial institutions for over 17 years.
Antonie is an experienced Market Risk Manager specialising in Traded Book and Counterparty Credit Risk, with a deep knowledge of Equities, Rates, Repo & Credit products. He typically leverages his expertise to deliver solutions for Risk Management and Model Development teams on Regulatory driven programmes such as BCBS239 and FRTB.
Antonie backs up his technical knowledge with proficiency in numerous programming languages including VBA, SQL and Python.
Antonie successfully engages with all levels of a client organisation and has worked successfully with Front Office, Quantitative Risk Management, Risk Modelling, Model Validation, and Risk Management teams. He is recognised as a Subject Matter Expert with meticulous attention to detail and often contributes to project working groups and steering committees.
Antonie’s recent projects include: Co-ordinating the implementation of new models within ALM IT with Quant developers for Rabobank; Improving the performance of the Incremental Risk Charge (IRC) model and co-ordinating the development of the Default Risk Charge (DRC) Model in Python for Lloyds Bank.
Previously, Antonie worked at Lloyds Banking Group, Rabobank, Dexia and Ardys.
Mike is a Principal Consultant at X-CO. He has 15 years’ experience of working with financial institutions in Tier 1 and Tier 2 Banks, having worked initially at one of the Big Four firms.
In his role as a Risk Control Specialist, he has worked with senior management in Group Finance to establish a consistent approach to CCAR process flows and control documentation. Mike also assisted on the identification, documentation and assessment of key procedural controls in accordance with best market practice.
Mike has a number of years’ experience within Product Control in Finance, across a diverse range of asset classes. He also has extensive technical experience of reviewing daily P&L, including front to back reconciliations, attributing the P&L using the Greeks including market commentary and a particular focus on training resources to facilitate offshoring.
Mike has successfully engaged and reported at all levels within client organisations and his work is recognised for its meticulous attention to detail. He has specialist experience in detailed reviews of process flows, identifying control deficiencies and providing solutions, derived from involvement in numerous assurance and risk engagements.
Mike has additionally worked in a number of project focused teams, including year-end testing, P&L governance, UAT/system migration and a P&L efficiency team responsible for identifying and implementing process improvements.
More recently Mike has been involved in managing the review and improvement of CCAR narrative documentation for UBS, prior to submission to the Fed. He was also key in implementing automation to increase efficiency and consistency of documentation production.
Previously, Mike worked for UBS, Credit Suisse, Morgan Stanley and PwC.
Rob is a Senior Consultant with X-CO. With 10 years’ experience of cross-industry roles in transformation and change, he is an extensively experienced Business Analyst/Project Manager, specialising in risk across financial services. Previous roles have involved the successful execution of both business and regulatory driven change initiatives. He has worked within multiple functions, across various financial institutions, including Front office, Credit Risk, Methodology, Market Risk & Wealth Management.
Rob has worked closely with senior stakeholders of leading banks across all global regions. His grasp of business and IT concepts have allowed him to successfully link the two functions and deliver projects with aspects of both. These projects have encompassed a high-level of complexity, with specific focus on stress-testing streams.
Rob has provided consultancy to clients on a large range of problem statements: project management; project inception and ramp-up; requirements definition; requirements implementation; IT implementation; IT architectural design; process improvement; TOM design; user and system testing and broader change management.
His past clients include Barclays, Mizuho, Credit Suisse and UBS.
Bal is a Managing Consultant with X-CO. He liaises with clients in his key areas of expertise whilst sharing responsibility for appointing and training X-CO’s consultants. He has 26 years’ experience of working in leading financial institutions.
Bal has a long history of building teams for the banking industry, with many of his early recruits now in senior management. Bal has used his comprehensive knowledge of investment banking to assist executives across a variety of programmes in Group Finance and Risk Control. He has deep technical knowledge in derivatives, market risk and product control, which he has used to design and deliver systematic solutions for P&L Explain and Legal Entity Cost Review programmes.
Bal has a distinguished resume of creating effective management information decks, technical documentation, systems and workflows. Bal leverages a core skillset gained from his early career as a mathematics teacher to effectively train and mentor other consultants and clients’ staff. He is often engaged to translate complex financial concepts into accessible insights and targeted solutions for management.
Bal was part of the X-CO team responsible for establishing the CCAR Risk Documentation process for UBS. He coordinated the 2019 filing to the FED and helped to transition the process to BAU by conducting training sessions for the client’s permanent workforce.
Bal is author of the 2016 Publication ‘Options Explained Simply: The Fundamental Principles Course’, a commercially available book on Futures and Options that also forms part of X-CO’s in-house training programme.
Previously, Bal worked at UBS, CSFB, Jefferies International and Santander.
Alex is the founder of X-Co. As Consulting Director he consults to clients in his areas of expertise whilst leading the strategic management and development of X-CO.
Alex has been a Financial Risk Professional for over 20 years and has worked in leading organisations across several industries. His technical background includes Market Risk and Operational Risk Modelling within the Banking Sector, with early career experience in building capital calculation models for Basel Regulations. Alex later carried his expertise over to the Insurance and Corporate Real Estate Sectors, to develop new risk reporting functions.
Alex spent the second half of his career as a Risk Specialist within UBS, embedded in various teams across the Investment Bank and Corporate Centre. He added Credit Risk Control and Liquidity Risk to his portfolio of experience and led groups of external consultants on an array of regulatory-driven programmes.
Alex has an exemplary track record of closing critical regulatory issues from FED, FINMA and FCA/PRA. Alex was a key player in the remediation effort that followed UBS’ Unauthorised Trading Incident in 2013, mitigating the firm’s exposure to regulatory and reputational risk. More recently Alex led a team of X-CO consultants to deliver a vital part of UBS’ Capital Analysis Review (CCAR) to the FED, including implementation of an automated solution for the bank and transition from ‘Change’ state to BAU.
Constructing high performance teams, problem solving and engineering bespoke solutions are Alex’s forte. He regularly sits on Operating, Executive and Steering Committees to drive change initiatives for banks, and liaises with senior management to enable the realisation of goals within tight budgets and timelines.
Alex has co-authored an approach to process, risk and control analysis called the ‘Process Risk Identification & Scoring Matrix (PRISM)’ The methodology can be applied to any industry and forms part of X-CO’s core offering for organisations who wish to leverage best market practice in their processes.
Alex has worked at UBS, Barclays, Aspen Re, Deutsche Bank and Lloyds Bank.
