Ashraf Ali Syed

Highly motivated Senior Business system Analyst professional with 11+ years of experience in Capital Markets, Wealth Management and Financial Services industry with excellent understanding of financial products like Fixed Income, Equities, Derivatives (Swaps, Options and Futures), Mutual Funds, ETFs, FOREX and Risk analysis of Investments using Monte Carlo simulation and Option Greeks. Exposure to regulations & compliance such as FINRA, ERISA, IRS, SEC, GAAP, FINMA, Investment Advisers Act, The Investment Company Act, Securities Exchange Act, Securities Investor Protection Act. In depth knowledge of Software development life cycle (SDLC) methodologies like Waterfall, Scrum, Waterfall-Scrum hybrid, Scale Agile Framework (SAFe), ScrumBan, Kanban, and Spiral. Stay informed about regulatory requirements related to KYC and ensure that the organization's KYC processes align with these regulations. Collaborate with stakeholders to understand their business needs and requirements related to ISO and SWIFT standards. In depth knowledge of Requirement Management, Change Management, Defect Management, Release Management, Project Management and Risk Management using JIRA, HP ALM and MS Project as project management tools. Proficient in networking with individuals at various levels and facilitate Requirements Elicitation sessions like survey/questionnaires, Interviews, Brainstorming, Focus group, Requirement workshops, Interface analysis, Document analysis and JAD. Conducted detailed project analyses of Business Processes by GAP analysis (AS-IS & TO-BE), Risk analysis, Impact assessment, Cause and effect analysis (Root cause analysis), Effort estimation, Cost-Benefit analysis, SWOT analysis & Feasibility Analysis. Proficiency in documenting artifacts by gathering requirements such as Business Requirements Document (BRD), Functional Requirement Document (FRD), Software Requirement Specification (SRS), Use Case Document (USD), Requirement Traceability Matrix (RTM), Change Request Document, Work Breakdown Structure (WBS), Risk Register and Project Charter Appropriately escalate NC/CAPA issues that could impact quality or timelines Automated clearing house (ACH), NACHA formats, Swift messages, Cheque Imaging, Billings Banking Infrastructure, Authorization and clearing settlements, ISO 20022 messages formats, Banking channels like telephony, Bankline etc. , Ensure seamless integration between KYC processes and other systems used in the organization, such as Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and transaction monitoring systems. Knowledge and exposure working with various regulations and compliance such as FINRA, FINCEN, PATRIOTIC ACT, BSA, AML and KYC Held team meetings to mediate disputes between AML analysts and QAs by identifying and discussing gaps in their understanding of guidance, which led to improvements in policies and procedures through constructive dialogue. Collaborate with IT teams to ensure seamless integration between Salesforce and other systems. Document and understand the organization's KYC processes, including data collection, verification, and monitoring procedures.

• Experience in creating Wireframes and Mockups using MS Visio and Balsamiq to visualize Graphical User Interface (GUI)
• Analyze existing processes and systems to identify gaps and areas for improvement to comply with ISO and SWIFT standards
• Well acquainted with Unified Modeling Language (UML) diagrams including Use Cases, Activity Diagrams, Sequence Diagrams
• Established and maintained effective working relationships with auditees and senior business leaders to ensure optimum sharing of information between the business and Internal Audit
• Detailed working knowledge of SCRUM and its Ceremonies like Backlog Grooming, Release Planning, Sprint Planning, Daily Standups, Sprint Review and Sprint Retrospective Meetings and SAFe Ceremonies like PI Planning and Scrum of Scrum Meetings
• Experienced in writing User Stories, defining Acceptance Criteria, writing Definition of Done (DOD) and Definition of Ready (DOR)
• Efficient in performing Vertical and Horizontal slicing of User stories and giving Story points by Estimation Techniques like Planning Poker, T shirt sizing, Relative Mass Evaluation, Bucket sizing and Affinity Mapping and Assisted Product owner in Prioritizing User stories in Product Backlog artifact using Prioritization Techniques like Moscow, Kano, Forced Ranking and Value stream Mapping
• Assisted ART (Agile Release Train) and scrum teams in resolving dependencies and Empowering the teams with the Pillars of Scrum such as increasing Transparency, Inspection and Adaptation and achieving goal to deliver the PSPI at the end of every Iteration
• Updated Policies and Procedures/Internal Guidelines with the aforementioned changes, which in turn improved the AML and QA programs at the Bank
• Extensive working knowledge of Continuous Integration and Continuous Deployment (CICD) using Jenkins and excellent understanding of development techniques like TDD (Test Driven Development), BDD (Behavior Driven Development) and ATDD (Acceptance Criteria Test Driven Development) and developing Featured Files (Gherkins format) using Cucumber
• Excellent understanding of System Architecture like Service Oriented Architecture (SOA), 3 tire Architecture and N-Tier architecture
• Significant experience of working on Application Programming Interface (API) Documentation using Swagger and API Testing using POSTMAN and SOAP UI to test the request and responses of APIs in JSON and XML format
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams to gather, analyze, and document business requirements for Open Payments Framework (OPF) implementations
• Work closely with compliance teams to ensure that KYC processes meet legal and regulatory standards
• Ensure that business processes and systems comply with ISO and SWIFT standards
• Communication and interaction with IT, support and business partners for any AML related support
• Planned, scoped, developed, and led internal audit for risk management, PPNR and CCAR
• Evaluated the existing trade surveillance practices with SME, Identifying the gaps and areas where compliance may be lacking
• Prodigious expertise with Business Intelligence tools like Power BI, Tableau and IBM Cognos to visualize the business statistics
• Performed Analysis to Identify the Sources, the Targets and wrote the Transformation Rules for the process of Data Migration
• Involved in Conceptual, Logical models and created ER diagrams (Entity-Relationship diagrams) for data modeling phase
• Experience in implementation of Dimensional data modeling with Star & Snowflake schema, Facts, Fact tables and Dimensions
• Proficient in creation of Data Dictionary, Data Glossary and Data Mapping Specification document and Data Mapping Document
• Worked on Relational Database Management System (RDBMS), Data Warehouses, Data marts, Operational Data store (ODS)
• Extensive knowledge of payment systems, including ACH, wire transfers, and Fedwire.