Akhil Bhardwaj

Managing IT operations for financial clients (Bank of America, Citizen, Allianz, JP Morgan Chase, CITI Bank

Present Account: Ameriprise Financial Inc

Account Management

• Managing pioneer financial sector account worth $390M total contract value with averaging 25% GP in actuals. Demonstrating a pivotal role in driving Operational Excellence Governance reviews with the CISO and senior leadership, ensuring alignment of operational practices with organizational goals and strategies.
• Demonstrated strong leadership by spearheading engagement, pre-sales activities, research and advisory, resulting in a notable GTS incremental revenue increase of $317M in 2020. Of this, $311M is secured through the extension of the Ameriprise contract for over 5 years. Recognized with Ameriprise Award of Excellence from CIO and EVP of Ameriprise Financial

Strategic Responsibilities as part of Role:

Contract Evaluation

• Responsible for overall Security Services delivered to client as per the contractual agreement and ensure audit readiness as per regulatory requirement (HIPAA,GDPR,FFIEC)
• Closely working with KYNDRYL/AFI architects and delivery team (GSB,ISAs,Account team focal, Platform support, Malware and IAM) to provide possible assistance from technical and logical standpoint for specific projects and manage potential Risk or vulnerable situation.
• Perform rigorous and legal review with Kyndryl legal team to ensure contract adhere to regulatory requirements and protect stakeholders and clients from any potential operational or legal disputes. Recognized for the prowess in the field of contract review. Played pivotal role with contract signing in Jul'20.

Security and Compliance

• Established strong monitoring and governance framework to address and eliminate potential intrusions with the deployment of NID's, NIP's and Geographical Blocking.
• Ensure Data Protection agreement in place with client that addresses HIPPA,GDPR,FFIEC or any other local county regulations that dictate data importers, exporters, processors.
• Working in the capacity as primary Security & Compliance focal for client and report account performance on monthly operational excellence

Cyber Security Defense

• With an objective to cultivate proactive detection, response and mitigation of cybersecurity incidents and encourage Continuous Improvement in Automation, detection, and response for Defense platforms.
• Plugged in CISO office, Security & Resiliency department and Kyndryl X-Force Red team and enrolled client with cyber security portfolio that includes Cyber security monitoring and reporting, Incident response Intelligence Services, tabletop exercises, forensic investigation and SecDevOps.

Service Management :

• Incident Management -Ensure service restoration of IT infrastructure services provided to KYNDRYL - Financial Service Sector clients, by detection, recording, classification, investigation, resolution and recovery within defined SLAs and proactive reporting to stakeholders
• Problem Management : Manage compliance to the problem management process through governance reporting, analyzing and defining root cause-based trend analysis and substantial evidences. Determine problem management based on Escalated Situational Model (includes SIP, RISK, CRITSIT) and help the business risk
• Change Management – Lead the department within Technology Infrastructure for Release and Delivery Management and ensure efficient and prompt handling of technology changes as per ITIL standards which help increase productivity for the business due to increase in availability and stability of production services
• SLA Management - Collaborate with internal and external stakeholders to deliver Business outcome – Silver Tier Applications, Infrastructure component availability – Server/Critic al Risk patches, Security Configuration Compliance, Infrastructure Provisioning for Standard build for standalone.

Efficient and effective handling of above responsibilities resulted in +$5M negotiated and saved over a period of 8 years, as a consequence of SLA disputed or situations beyond control of any vendor partner.

Automation Enabler & Infrastructure Modernization

• Strong advocate of exploring automation opportunities and enabling SRE's, SMEs and architects with fair playing field.
• Encouraging automations deployments in line with Kyndryl vision around 3A's – Alliances , Advanced Delivery and Accounts and promote use of tools and methodologies like Ansible, AIOps, Cloud Transformation in partnership with Alliance partners (AWS, Microsoft) and Kyndryl Bridge
• Thorough understanding of client business requirements and help establish IT road map that strengthens client future state operations and promoting ease of doing business. Demonstrated how changing technology impact Infrastructure and Operational design. Coordinated with Project management and technology tower stakeholders with Hardware refresh program pertaining to Network, Midrange, Storage, Security, Tools and Mainframe, prominent examples: Netcool(Monitoring), Ansible(Automation), Qualys(Scanning), Symantec(AV), McAfee(Defense mechanism)

Previous Experience

• HDFC Bank - Portfolio Relationship Manager - Client Sales & Services - Retail Banking Operations (Jan 2007 - Oct 2008)
• BA Continuum Solutions Pvt. Ltd. - Consumer Real Estate - Sales Operations (Jan 2006 - Jan 2007)
• Teleperformance India - Sales And Marketing Specialist (Apr 2004 - Jan 2006)