Syed Zain Mahdi

• Collaborated with stakeholders across departments to define requirements for new projects.
• Monitored project timelines and budgets by tracking milestones, deliverables, tasks.
• Developed audit reports using SQL queries to track progress against key performance indicators.
• Managed projects and served as the primary liaison between the client and multiple internal teams to clarify goals, and meet standards and deadlines.
• Avid experience with the Full Suite Data Lineage project, a strong understanding of project processes, data flow, and deliverables.
• Coordinate with Audit coordinators, internal and external team members, and stakeholders to ensure end-to-end deliverables.
• Organize task allocation, BAU priorities, negotiate timelines with the requestors, and coordinate with offshore team members to ensure the completeness of the requested deliverables.

• To onboard key foreign portfolio investors, assist in regulatory compliance, conduct risk assessments based on client jurisdiction, assess market exposure based on client investments in India through other custodians, improve process efficiency, and mentor new joinees.
• Facilitate the onboarding of key portfolio investors, and assist them through the FPI license procurement process. Assess risk based on client jurisdiction, estimate total exposure to Indian markets, assist in the end-to-end documentation process, and liaise with internal and external stakeholders for necessary approvals, and follow up on a day-to-day basis.
• Established a documentation process protocol through a detailed step-by-step process and exhaustive checklist, covering the end-to-end license renewal process. The protocol mandated a checklist-driven scrutiny of KYC compliance at the license renewal stage. Unit-wide adoption resulted in a 75% efficiency improvement.
• Played a key role in custodian transfer of 200+ FPIs (1 trillion+ USD AUC) from other custodians to Citibank in 3 months. Liaised with clients and custodian stakeholders in order to facilitate a smooth transfer in a short span of time.
• Mentored 10+ new joinees and trained them on various processes, including but not limited to domain knowledge, client and regulatory understanding, real-time guidance, and hand-holding during client onboardings.

Undertook a research project to study the Indian commodity markets and understand customer perceptions toward commodities.

• Project: Commodities as an Asset Class & Knowing the Behaviour and Preferences of Varied Investor Segments
• Approach: Conducted a detailed survey of 200+ businesses dealing in the Indian commodities market covering their perception of the Indian commodity market, commodity preferences and investment methodology.
• Findings: Created a report on the findings of the survey to understand the behavioural preferences in various customer segments in the commodity markets and generate investor awareness in commodities as an asset class.