Chief Operating Officer
Al Rajhi Takaful
Total years of experience :31 years, 3 Months
One of the founding members of Al Rajhi Takaful, the fastest growing insurer in KSA. No 1 position in Motor business & No3 position in KSA across all insurers, has been a visionary entrusted to Envision & execute a transformational strategy for Al Rajhi Takaful, covering IT, Operations, Customer Experience, Digital Business and HR. Over the years have become a trusted partner, key management member and Most critical trouble shooter for the organization.
Chief Operating Officer (2015 to present)
Promoted as Chief Operating Officer with responsibilities covering Information Technology departments., Administration, Customer Experience and Operations
As COO holding diverse other portfolios managing over 30% (~350) of the company’s staff achieving best in class performance across various portfolios, key achievements include
• Running a multiyear Digital Transformation Program - GO DIGITAL digitizing and phigitizing organizational technology by developing a cutting edge Enterprise Architecture. The Program not just transforms technology but also converts the whole Customer Journey and Organizational thought process using Design Thinking approach, currently over 65% of the program has been completed successfully
• Built and Established kingdoms first Insurance Online Portal. The Digital ecommerce platform consisted of web, mobile App and kiosks setting up the channel from scratch and achieved 10% of companies’ revenue in 12 months’ time, The Digital channel is today contributing over 80% of companies’ retail business across over 1 Million customers. Currently enhancing the online capabilities thru a Digital Customer Platform to build next age Digital Commerce
• Established solid Human Resources Practices and new organizational culture reducing overall attrition from 33% in 2015 to less than 10% currently, achieving employee satisfaction higher than 80% during the last 3 years, Building a new work environment, Job evaluation, Automated HR practices
• Responsible for reducing overall cost of logistics and premises across AL Rajhi Takaful locations through consolidation and optimal resource management and resource deployments, have Achieved budget savings of 10% YOY through aggressive cost reduction strategies and vendor negotiations, established a new consolidated HO center from build to live
• Established a state of art Customer Care & Customer Experience unit certifying the same with ISO 10002 certification and cutting edge technology providing an industry leading NPS and Customer Satisfaction.
• Instrumental in setting up Insurance industries first RPA unit since 2015, today running over 200 robots to cover diverse processes across the organization, overall FTE saved due to Robotics is exceeding 150 FTEs. The RPA unit has matured to Artificial intelligence, Business Analytics and Conversational Intelligence
• Technology Leadership through introduction of multiple IT capabilities including business analytics, simplified digital portals, analytics, robotics and process automation, enterprise data capabilities etc.
• Setting up and running an operations unit consisting of male and females back office staff achieving best in class performance, and operational excellence, over the last 5 years’ operations staff have been consistently reduced by automation initiatives resulting into significant savings across the operational fte
Promoted in 2013 & role was enlarged to establish a centralized Operations from 23 different locations. Built a solution to expand automation of work and digitize activities to minimal human intervention, established operational excellence across the unit, optimize man power, create operational rigor, standardize processes and put in place SLA & controls. Was instrumental in running a cost optimization project that reduced overall organizational manpower saving by over 32% of non-sales employees. Was also instrumental in reducing the overall organization G&A ratio from 11% in 2013 to 5.6% in 2017.
Was instrumental in envisioning a technology transformation program ASPIRE creating solid technology platform outlining the components, create an Enterprise Architecture, Governance, build IT Infrastructure & Team covering Applications that would drive ROI, Customer Experience, Improve Policy Holder service levels and provide Clean and Comprehensive MIS to the management and realize Business Deliverables, The impact of IT platform left the organization to overall improve operational metrics, overall loss ratio reduction, reduce costs and speed up its break even. Was instrumental in introducing self-service, automation and straight thru processing to the organization leading to cost, time and quality improvements
Key Achievements
Created & envisioned an IT roadmap & Enterprise Architecture thru ASPIRE an enterprise project run over 2 yrs achieved its ROI in 2 years, boosted organization capability and scalability. Currently generating one of the largest Digital Transformation program in Middle east across insurers covering diverse capabilities
Centralize Operations across various units such as Retail Operations, Branch operations, Life policy servicing, leased car servicing, Medical Claims Data entry and adjudication, archival, dispatch, policy documentation and compliance and verification.
Establish Operations efficiency and reducing organization non sales man power by 32%
Establishing one of the largest revenue earning online insurance ecommerce sites in KSA
Drive enterprise automation across all organization leading to better savings, automation and customer experience
Successfully rolled out so far 128 business deliverables into live environment creating a comprehensive system landscape and one of the most aggressive roll out in the middle east region for systems such as Oracle ERP, Siebel CRM, Share Point, Biztalk EAI, Enterprise Portals, Oracle Data warehouse & Business Intelligence, Chatbots, mobile apps, WhatsApp business, Customer engagement platforms,
Establishing RPA and NLP enabled robotics unit automating over 200 processes resulting into FTE savings of over 80+ FTE
Tower Head Insurance & Excom Member - Direct Report to COO
Create and Head strategic IT & Operations Unit for Insurance in Infosys BPO and organically and inorganically grow customer accounts and identify a roadmap for Technology led Operations Transformation. Was instrumental in putting the foundations for growing the business. Manage over 1250 FTE across 13 customers and across 5 Global Locations
- Identify & Play a leadership role in Acquisition & Integration of of Mccamish Systems Identify, due diligence, transition and deal structuring
- Spearheaded creating a Technology Platform and operations framework for Insurance Automation as a transformational offering for the customers
- Centralization of multi country operations transformation Swiss Life covering diverse countries such as Lichtenstein, Luxembourg, Singapore, Hong Kong, Cambodia, China, Argentina and 4 other countries
- Create an Insurance Center of Excellence to train, coach and govern the Insurance customer relationships
- Consulting on Operations Transformation and Consolidation for several insurers (National wide, TIAA CREF, Sun Corp Australia, WellPoint, AXIS Re, XL Catlin, Swiss Life, AVIVA UK)
Reporting to the Chief Delivery Officer recruited to create & manage IT and Operations for Insurance Customers of IGATE (currently Cap Gemini), The role also envisages the need to create the infrastructure, technology applications and business operations and consult customer to provide solutions to centralize and create shared service set up. Manage $47M operating budget and direct activities of 1250+ staff located across 9 global locations
Successfully created India’s first Virtual Enterprise with end to end Technology platform, across multiple locations in NOIDA, Bangalore, Melbourne and Sydney Technology Infrastructure & Process for Residential Tenancy Bond Authority of Victorian State of Australia,
Virtualization & Technology transformation of RTBA (Residential Tenancy Bond Authority) infrastructure with state of art Verizon cohosted Data center in Sydney with replication from Melbourne on fully virtual environment
Mail Room automation with state of art OPEX corp machine to handle cradle to grave of the inbound mails at Ballarat Australia for all customers
Create Centralized & outsourced delivery centres (I TOPS) for Royal Bank of Canada Insurance including Hardware, Software and Business Operations
Cost Saving & Optimization of Hooper Holmes through Technology led transformation by creating a custom Application to simplify underwriting and electronically underwriting
Transformation of Swiss Re Application Delivery by Consolidating & Migrating applications into a Structured & shared Application Delivery Model based on Flexible Resourcing
Enterprise Dashboard construction for BUPA UK including Activity Based Costing and management
Consulting to Major Insurance Customers in Japan, Canada, US, Australia and Europe on shared service and centralized delivery of operations
Insurance Off shoring & create a road map for Technology transformation using a triangle business model.
Domain enabling Insurance IT Delivery teams (500+ resources) through training, knowledge base building, certification etc., Risk Management & SOX certification for BPO
Summary Achievement `Metrics
Avg Growth in Insurance Revenue 23% CAGR
No of Customers Added in the tenure 16
Overall Cost reduction due to transformation Circa 12%
No of Projects / Initiatives Completed to planned 99%
No of Leadership level trainings 12
No of Transformational Projects` 13
Margin Growth YOY ~3% to 5%
Direct Report to Regional Head East Coast US
Manage Cross functional projects spread across Technology, Operations and Business Strategy. meeting strict deadlines, multi country global transformations, fulfilling stakeholder expectations, working closely with all organizational units and client stake holders. Responsible for project initiation, planning, execution and control of projects, project managers and, developing insurance vertical
Major Projects
Oct 04 - Jun05 - Navisys & Prudential US relationship
Sep04-Oct04 - Preparation of Business Case for Indian Market entry
Aug04-Sep04 - Russian Life Insurance Market Entry Strategy RGS Russia
July04-Aug04 - Indian Insurance Market entry strategy for a new entrant
Jun04 - jul04 - Anchor TCS -Pearl Assurance relationship
Apr04 - May04 - Old Mutual South Africa, Process Optimization Strategy
Jan04 - Mar 04 - AXA Life Relationship in UK
Dec03-Jan03 - Created a Data Model for Life Insurance
Sep03 -Nov03 - Reqt Gathering & Design Spec writing for AXA China
Aug03-sep03 - Insights on regulatory compliance - Market watch group
Jun03 - Jul 03 - Sanlam Life South Africa, BPO Strategy
Jul02-Aug02 - Pilot project on Pensions Application rewrite for Skandia UK
April02-Jun02 - Testing Support for General Org for Social Insurance KSA
Feb02-Mar02 - Sanlam Life South Africa, Business Architecture
Jan02-Feb02 - Design for TCS product Product Designer Workbench
Jun01-Dec01 - Unisure Designer for Norwich Union Life K
Achievements
•200% revenue growth for Insurance Relationship in New Jersey US, by positioning innovative offerings and establishing TCS delivery credentials to customers such as Prudential, Progressive, Navisys and AIG
• Total rewrite of the pension’s application for Skandia Life UK within the scheduled time and budget using an offshore onsite model.
•Comprehensive business case for life insurance entry providing expected ROI & projected growth in business
•Strategy map for RGS Russia which facilitates linking of 2300 satellite offices in a cost effective manner with least redundancy & employee lay off
•ZAR 5 Million projected saving thru process optimization initiatives at Old Mutual South Africa
•Three Tier Strategy presented for Sanlam Life RSA created additional revenue of ZAR 10 Million by converting existing insurance operations into an in sourcing hub. Alternative strategies proposed include white labeling & shadow outsourcing
•End to end business analysis & design for various insurance functions across multiple customers and geographies ( Norwich Union, UK, AXA China Region, Unisys UK, GOSI Saudi Arabia, Old Mutual RSA, ING US )
Head of Department - Report to Branch / Division Manager
Roles Played: Head of Department, Supervisor, Operations executive
Supervising of Insurance operations at a satellite centre managing functional areas such as Supervising Individual life operations Operations (Claims assessment, investigation and payment, New Business Underwriting, Policy Administration and Client Management)Head of Department Various Functions Jun 1998 to - May 01
Manage Insurance operations involving functions such as
- Management of Satellite Office ( Branches)
- Operations In Charge for various functions (Underwriting, Distributor Management, Claims assessment and payment, Policy Administration, Accounting and Annual Returns)
- Monitoring metrics and process delivery
- System Administration and Business Analysis
Supervisor Jun 95 to - Jun 98
- Employee Benefits and Group Insurance Schemes Administration
- Finance & Accounting functions
- IT administration
Operations Executive Sep 92 to - Jun 95
Perform Insurance functions such as
- New Business - Case creation, submission, Underwriting, placement and issue
- Policy Administration - Loans, Surrenders, Withdrawals, Policy Changes,
- Claims - Registration, Processing, investigation and payment / rejection of claim
- Support to Sales Functions - New Business data capture, registration, processing and pre scrutiny, lead generation
- IT functions - Batch runs, create modules, production support, Develop software for satellite office operations.
Associate of Chartered Insurance Institute
Fellow of Insurance Institute of India
Master of Commerce inInsurance
Specialization in Insurance
