Saroj Herlekar

Company Overview:

Bank of New York (formerly BNY Mellon) is a global investments company dedicated to helping its clients manage and service their financial assets throughout the investment lifecycle. Business operations in India include transfer agency, fund accounting support, mutual fund and tax-exempt, financial reporting, custody operations, corporate trust, and finance operations.

As a specialist, and consequently a senior specialist, my role involves working with senior management and stakeholders as part of a proactive approach in the review, oversight, and challenge of operational risk for corporate functions such as human resources, finance, risk and compliance, and the chief administrative office.

Risk and Control Self-Assessments

• RCSA Review, challenge, and approval of new and existing Risk and Control Self-Assessments.
• Review and concur with the RCSA from the second line perspective annually, using a risk-based approach based on materiality.

Gaps and Actions.

• Review of Issues and Remediation Tasks.
• Monitor the progress of remediation tasks, timelines, and aging.
• Approve the closures of remediation tasks.
• Review past due Remediation's, revised Remediation's, monthly closed, and cancelled Remediation Tasks.

Risk Acceptances.

• Advice, oversight, and monitoring of new and existing risk acceptances.
• Approve new and existing risk acceptance, and cancellation of risk acceptances.

Operational Risk Limits.

• Review and challenge ORLs for applicability and effectiveness.
• Monthly review of Red Amber L3 Operational Risk Limits results, root cause analysis, and identification of ORLs that require immediate attention.
• Follow up and challenge the missing ORL results.
• Review and concur with the ORLs from the second line perspective biannually, using a risk-based approach based on materiality.

Manual processes.

• Challenge the business assessments for appropriate consideration of the inclusion of the Manual Process in the Manual Process Inventory.
• Review, challenge, and approve manual process remediation activities when high-risk manual processes are remediated.
• Review and sign off on the Risk Acknowledgement of High-Risk Manual Processes that will remain in manual status for client transactions to be completed manually.

High-Level Assessments

• Review the assessments of the aggregated RCSA results of the RCSA process, and the Risk Taxonomy (HLA) prepared by the 1LOD.
• Review and challenge the rationale of the qualitative assessments of all the Risk Categories performed by the 1LOD.
• Review and challenge rating changes versus the previous quarter, deviation from RCSA aggregation ratings, emerging top five risks, and significant major business process changes, first-line commentary on thematic changes with respect to material independent control assessments, ORL, and significant OREs.

Operational Risk Events.

• Review ORE’s for timely notification, distribution, and update in the Risk Management Platform.
• Review ORE classification and accuracy for Potential Loss or Gain, Actual Loss or Gain, Near Miss, or Rapid Recovery.
• Review event descriptions, root cause, preventative actions, Basel classification, and risk taxonomy.
• Review the General Ledger posting, financial impact, and financial responsibility, if appropriate.
• Review linking of OREs to the RCSA, rationale for non-linkage, root cause analysis, and lessons learned exercise.
• Monitoring, oversight, challenge, and approval to close.

Other Activities.

• Collaborate with the Control Team and stakeholders for BAU activities daily or as needed.
• Monthly reporting of dashboards, observations to relevant stakeholders, and follow-up for closure.
• Conduct training for new joiners.
• Engage with 1LOD business partners on improving the ORM framework.
• Evaluate and provide improvement solutions where applicable.

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Risk And Control Self Assessments

• RCSA Review, challenge and approval of new and existing Risk and Control Self-Assessment
• Review and concur the RCSA from the 2nd Line perspective annually with a risk-based approach based on materiality

Gaps and Actions

• Review of Issues, and Remediation Tasks
• Monitor Progress of Remediation tasks, timelines, ageing
• Approve closures of Remediation tasks
• Review past due Remediation's, Revised Remediation's, monthly closed and cancelled Remediation Tasks

Risk Acceptances

• Advice, oversight and monitor of new and existing risk acceptances
• Approve new and existing Risk acceptance and cancellation of risk acceptances

Operational Risk Limits

• Review and challenge ORL’s for applicability and effectiveness
• Monthly review of Red Amber L3 Operational Risk Limits results, root cause analysis, and identify ORL’s that require immediate attention
• Follow up and challenge on missing ORL results
• Review and concur the ORL’s from the 2nd Line perspective bi-annually with a risk-based approach based on materiality

Operational Risk Events

• Review ORE’s for timely notification., distribution and update in the Risk Management Platform
• Review ORE classification and accuracy for Potential Loss or Gin, Actual Loss or Gain, Near Miss or Rapid Recovery
• Review Event descriptions, Root Cause, Preventative Actions, Basel Classification and Risk Taxonomy
• Review General Ledger Posting, Financial Impact and Financial Responsibility if appropriate
• Review Linking of ORE’s to the RCSA, rationale for non-linkage, Root cause Analysis and Lessons learned exercise
• Monitoring, oversight, challenge and approval to close

As a Lead Analyst Control with BNY, my key role included frequent monitoring, evaluation, and subsequent testing of respective business groups' adherence to relevant Service Level Descriptions, Securities Laws, Regulations, BNY Policies, Procedures, and Customer Agreements.

My responsibilities included control testing for various processes of the Corporate Trust and Institutional Accounting business lines, as follows.

Design reviews with regard to process flow and controls with respect to.

• Interest and principal payment processing of securities, reconciliations, client onboarding, account setup on IMMS, GSP, maintenance, and termination for redemptions and maturity.
• Core Fund Accounting, Trade and Asset Reconciliations, Pricing, and NAV construction.
• Global Institutional Accounting and Risk Solutions Performance Reporting.
• Documentation Review of Standard Operating Procedures, Statement of Work, and Service Level Descriptions.
• Execution testing for accuracy, timeliness, and completion for various processes within the Corporate Trust, Global Risk Solutions, and Global Institutional Accounting business lines.
• Conduct follow-ups to ensure closure of gaps for Corporate Trust, GRS, and GIA.
• Coordinate with onshore stakeholders and embedded control managers to ensure the closure of open items.
• Root Cause Analysis of Operational Risk Events and Subsequent Reporting.

End to End Deal Reviews

• Perform control reviews for Corporate Trust CDO, Corporate Sovereign, and Structures Finance teams in coordination with the Onshore Control Officer for London and Wexford Operations.
• Gap and action plan follow-up for closure.
• Monthly reporting of observations to relevant business heads.
• Theme-Based Awareness
• Conduct awareness of suspicious activity reporting and assessments.
• Conduct clear desk reviews.
• Shared Drive reviews, Group Mail Box reviews, and Entitlement Reviews.
• Facilitate Risk and Control Self-Assessment, and Quarterly concurrence sign-off.

Company Overview:

Wipro Ltd is one of the leading IT service providers in India, with its headquarters in Bangalore. They provide IT services, BPO, and technology infrastructure.

Audits and Compliance.

• Review general and contractual checklists for audits as per ISMS requirements.
• Follow up with business lines to ensure compliance with policies and procedures.
• Business Continuity Planning.
• Review the BCP plan documents.
• Perform BCP tabletop exercise and call tree testing.
• Follow up with business lines to close BCP tabletop observations.
• Process-related compliance.
• Conduct desktop reviews to ensure the hardening of systems.
• Perform Clear Desk Reviews.
• Review of Standard Operating Procedures and Policies.
• Personnel file reviews for complete joining documentation.
• Logical and physical ID reconciliation.
• Other Compliance-Related Requirements.
• Drive the closure of RMAC COBC (Risk Management and Compliance - Code of Business Conduct) certifications across processes in the Pune location.
• Conduct quarterly training and awareness sessions across processes in the Pune location.
• Carry out Security Incident Reporting, Investigations, and Interviews.

• Daily Weekly And Monthly Activities
• Perform administrative duties such as Attendance, shift planning, feedback, one on one sessions of a team size of 16 Executives
• Conduct daily briefings and maintenance of briefing records with respect to changes to the process operational activities, updates etc
• Compile and conduct monthly product change tests
• Perform Quality Analysis of customer calls and handle escalations
• Identify training needs and organize training sessions
• Maintain daily reports and MIS, Monthly health cards
• Audit SPOC
• Front end Internal Audit based on the ISO 2001-9000 framework
• Conduct Pre-Audit Preparedness
• Conduct Awareness sessions for ISO with regards to floor policies, BPC, RMAC, Security Incident Reporting and Compliance.
• Ensure 100% Awareness and closures of ISMS signoffs and NDA sign offs
• Conduct awareness and sign offs of Fatal errors and Floor policies
• Email communication of weekly compliance dashboards with compliance teams
• Front End Compliance, BPC and RMAC audits
• Ensure 100% closures on BPC, RMAC and COBC tests for the process
• Was instrumental in creating SOP’s reviewing version controls, classification and revisions in the process documents as per ISO requirements
• HR SPOC
• One point contact for HR with regards to hiring and resignations for the process
• Roll out the Internal postings for Quality, Trainer and other internal postings
• Coordinate and close pending employee confirmations
• Schedule skips and focus group discussions
• Sourcing
• Create awareness on sourcing requirements
• Create an internal sourcing team catering to each sub teams on the floor for both voice and back office
• Others
• Coordinate with Supervisors to conduct monthly reviews and discuss improvement plans
• Review Attrition forecast for the process
• Follow up and update system downtime
• Review calibration calls
• Create process overview and Organization chart for the process

Company Overview:

Vodafone Idea is a telecommunications operator in India that covers 17 telecom circles.

• Perform administrative tasks for a group of 25 executives.
• Ensure the briefing of new schemes and promotions.
• Compile and conduct monthly knowledge tests.
• Query and escalation call, quality check activities.
• Identify training needs, and organize training sessions.
• Repeat Call Audits.
• Update daily reports, monthly scorecard, and MIS.
• Vodafone Idea is a telecommunications operator in India that covers 17 telecom circles.

• Handle customer queries, requests and complaints and provide resolutions
• Forward prospects to sales teams
• Retrieval of voice messages and consequent call back to customers
• Conducting Role plays and motivational drives