Hitesh Parashar
Gurugram
Summary
Chief manager with extensive experience in life insurance and banking, including product management, risk and control frameworks, and product governance. Designed and implemented control frameworks to improve operational efficiency, ensure regulatory compliance, and reduce fraud risk. Led end-to-end customer onboarding and technology-enabled process transformation supported by measurable outcomes.
Overview
1
1
Certification
16
16
years of professional experience
Work History
Chief Manager
Axis Max Life Insurance
Gurgaon
05.2025 - Current
- End-to-End Customer Onboarding Ownership: Lead and oversee the complete new-customer onboarding journey for life insurance, from application initiation to policy issuance, ensuring a seamless customer experience while maintaining robust regulatory, operational, and fraud risk controls.
- Onboarding Controls Framework: Own, design, develop, and implement the end-to-end onboarding controls framework, ensuring effective governance, risk mitigation, regulatory compliance, and operational efficiency throughout the customer lifecycle.
- New Control Development & Implementation: Proactively identify control gaps, emerging risks, and process vulnerabilities, and independently develop and implement new controls for customer onboarding to strengthen the overall control environment and address evolving business, regulatory, and fraud risks.
- KYC, EDD & Fraud Prevention: Design and oversee effective KYC, Enhanced Due Diligence (EDD), customer verification, and fraud prevention frameworks, ensuring smooth and frictionless customer onboarding without compromising regulatory requirements or risk safeguards.
- Innovation & Digital Transformation: Drive innovation initiatives across the new-customer onboarding journey by identifying opportunities for process automation, digital transformation, technology integration, and intelligent control solutions to enhance customer experience, operational efficiency, and control effectiveness.
- Onboarding Technology Ownership: Own and drive the onboarding technology ecosystem, leading technology development, research, and transformation initiatives to simplify onboarding processes, eliminate operational bottlenecks, and strengthen preventive and detective controls.
- Audit & Regulatory Governance: Lead all internal and external regulatory audits for the department, including audit planning, preparation, evidence management, observation tracking, stakeholder coordination, remediation planning, and timely closure of audit findings.
- Third-Party Risk Management: Oversee third-party risk management for API integration partners and human resource partners, covering due diligence, risk assessments, SLA monitoring, performance governance, compliance reviews, and ongoing risk mitigation.
- Cross-Functional Stakeholder Management: Collaborate with Business, Technology, Compliance, Legal, Risk, and Internal Audit teams to embed robust controls into business-as-usual operations and ensure effective governance across the onboarding ecosystem.
- Management Reporting & Control Effectiveness: Monitor and evaluate the effectiveness of onboarding controls, fraud prevention measures, and operational risk frameworks, providing regular updates, risk insights, and recommendations to senior leadership.
- Continuous Improvement & Process Excellence: Continuously assess onboarding processes, identify improvement opportunities, and implement innovative solutions to enhance straight-through processing, reduce customer friction, minimize operational risks, and improve overall onboarding performance.
Chief Manager
Airtel Payments Bank
10.2023 - 05.2025
- Product Governance & Framework Development: Conceptualised and implemented a centralised Product Governance Framework and standard operating procedures (SOPs), strengthening governance, standardisation, accountability and operational efficiency across the bank.
Recognised with the COO Appreciation Award for significant contributions towards strengthening the bank's product control framework.
- Third-Party Risk Management: Designed and established the organisation-wide Third-Party Risk Management Framework, including policies, governance standards, risk assessment methodologies and vendor oversight mechanisms.
Led end-to-end vendor onboarding and due diligence initiatives, ensuring appropriate risk assessments, regulatory compliance, governance and ongoing third-party oversight.
- New Product Launch & Risk Assessment: Formulated and implemented a comprehensive New Product Launch Framework, incorporating structured risk assessment, control evaluation, regulatory compliance and a Product Risk Scorecard to assess and monitor product risk.
- Payment Aggregator Risk Framework: Conceptualised and developed the risk management framework for the bank's Payment Aggregator business from scratch.
Established merchant onboarding controls, risk assessment methodologies, and periodic merchant risk categorization models.
- Control Framework & Risk Oversight: Strengthened product governance and risk oversight through the development of structured control mechanisms, risk evaluation processes, and continuous monitoring frameworks.
Senior Manager
Airtel Payments Bank
05.2022 - 09.2023
- Enterprise Risk & Product Control Management: Managed end-to-end risk and control frameworks across a diverse portfolio of banking products, ensuring adherence to RBI, NPCI, IRDAI and PFRDA regulatory requirements.
Oversaw risk and control governance across Cards, Wallet, UPI, DMT, IMPS, NEFT, FASTag, BBPS, Atal Pension Yojana, General, Health and Life Insurance, Debit Fixed Deposits, Referral Loans and Digital Gold.
Identified emerging operational, regulatory and fraud risks, and designed and implemented preventive and detective controls to strengthen the overall control environment and minimise business risk exposure.
- Control Design, Implementation & Fraud Prevention: Proactively identified process vulnerabilities and control gaps, and developed and implemented new controls and process improvements, including Debit Card management and compliance governance, to prevent operational losses, regulatory breaches and fraudulent activities.
Led the strategic evaluation, selection and onboarding of a specialised vendor for proactive risk monitoring of gaming merchants, strengthening merchant risk controls, reducing fraud exposure and achieving cost efficiencies.
Strengthened the effectiveness of existing controls through continuous risk assessment, control enhancements and process optimisation.
- Regulatory Compliance, Audit & Control Assurance: Drove a significant reduction in audit observations through proactive risk mitigation, process standardisation, control strengthening and enhanced compliance governance.
Facilitated periodic Risk and Control Self-Assessment (RCSA) workshops and control testing exercises to identify control gaps, assess control effectiveness and drive timely remediation.
Conducted comprehensive product risk assessments and control evaluations ahead of internal and regulatory audits to ensure audit readiness and compliance.
Led the implementation of new regulatory requirements issued by governing authorities, ensuring timely compliance and integration into business processes and technology systems.
- New Product Risk Assessment & Governance: Conducted pre-launch risk assessments and control evaluations for new products and business initiatives, ensuring regulatory compliance, operational readiness and appropriate risk mitigation before go-live.
Evaluated product-level risks, identified potential control weaknesses and recommended mitigation measures to ensure robust governance throughout the product lifecycle.
- Technology, Automation & Innovation: Conceptualised and developed an automated risk management tool to streamline risk assessment processes, improve operational efficiency and strengthen risk monitoring capabilities.
Partnered with technology teams to develop and implement system enhancements and automation solutions, embedding controls into business processes and reducing manual intervention.
Delivered cost savings of INR 10 million (₹1 crore) in FY 2024–25 by conceptualising and implementing the digitalisation of customer communications through the bank's mobile application.
Managed the implementation of a new Document Management System to improve document governance, control, accessibility and operational efficiency.
- Third-Party Risk & Vendor Governance: Established a structured vendor performance monitoring framework incorporating periodic risk reviews and audits to assess vendor performance, ensure SLA compliance and strengthen third-party governance.
Monitored vendor service quality, operational performance and control adherence, identifying risk exposures and driving corrective actions wherever required.
- Process Excellence, Governance & Management Reporting: Managed the implementation of the Product Governance Policy and spearheaded a grievance reduction initiative to strengthen operational governance and improve customer experience.
Prepared and presented periodic MIS reports and risk updates to senior management, highlighting key risk indicators, control effectiveness, audit observations and mitigation plans to facilitate informed decision-making.
Manager
Axis Max Life Insurance
11.2013 - 05.2022
- Underwriting Risk Assessment & Decision Support: Reviewed and assessed complex financial and mortality risk cases to support informed underwriting decisions, ensuring appropriate risk evaluation, adherence to underwriting guidelines and effective risk selection.
Analyzed customer financial profiles, risk disclosures, and mortality-related factors to identify potential risk exposures and support consistent, risk-based underwriting decisions.
Supported the underwriting team in strengthening risk assessment methodologies, and ensuring consistency in underwriting decisions.
- Underwriting Framework & Governance: Contributed to the development, enhancement and implementation of underwriting frameworks, policies and standard operating procedures to strengthen risk governance and decision-making.
Assisted in establishing structured underwriting processes, approval mechanisms and control checkpoints to ensure adherence to internal policies and regulatory requirements.
Supported the rollout and implementation of revised underwriting guidelines, ensuring effective communication, process alignment and consistent adoption across the underwriting team.
- Regulatory Compliance & Quality Assurance: Monitored adherence to applicable regulatory requirements, internal underwriting policies and established risk assessment guidelines.
Oversaw underwriting quality control activities, identifying deviations, process gaps and inconsistencies in underwriting decisions and recommending corrective actions.
Supported periodic quality reviews and process assessments to strengthen underwriting controls, minimise errors and improve overall decision-making standards.
- Operational Performance & Productivity Monitoring: Monitored underwriting team productivity, turnaround times (TAT), case volumes and operational performance against defined business and service-level parameters.
Prepared and reviewed performance reports and operational MIS to identify productivity gaps, bottlenecks and opportunities for process improvement.
Collaborated with underwriting stakeholders to improve operational efficiency, maintain quality standards and ensure timely processing of underwriting cases.
Team Member
FIS Global Business Solutions (American Express)
01.2013 - 11.2013
Executive Underwriter
Axis Max Life Insurance
01.2012 - 01.2013
Jr. Analyst
WNS Research & Analytics (Kantar)
11.2010 - 01.2012
Education
PGDM (Executive) — IMT Ghaziabad - Operations Management
IMT
Ghaziabad04-2026
BBA -
GJU
Hisar01.2010
Diploma - International Management
JIMS
New Delhi01.2010
Skills
- Control implementation and policy management
- Vendor and operations management
- Operational strategies and efficiency
- Cost optimization and risk management
- Product and project management
- Audit and compliance oversight
- Data analysis and critical thinking
- Team leadership and problem solving
- Corporate governance and business planning
Certification
- Lean Six Sigma Green Belt, Certified
- Product Management Fundamentals, Certified
- ISO 27001 Lead Auditor, Pursuing
Languages
- English
- Hindi
- Punjabi
Date Of Birth
11th May 1989
Awards
- COO Appreciation Award for leading improvement in product control framework in bank
- Quarterly awards for exceptional contributions to organizational projects
Timeline
Chief Manager
Axis Max Life Insurance
05.2025 - Current
Chief Manager
Airtel Payments Bank
10.2023 - 05.2025
Senior Manager
Airtel Payments Bank
05.2022 - 09.2023
Manager
Axis Max Life Insurance
11.2013 - 05.2022
Team Member
FIS Global Business Solutions (American Express)
01.2013 - 11.2013
Executive Underwriter
Axis Max Life Insurance
01.2012 - 01.2013
Jr. Analyst
WNS Research & Analytics (Kantar)
11.2010 - 01.2012
PGDM (Executive) — IMT Ghaziabad - Operations Management
IMT
BBA -
GJU
Diploma - International Management
JIMS