Candidates About

 

Savitha Venkat

 

Over 10 years of extensive IT experience as a Project Manager and Business Analyst specialized in the field of Regulatory Reporting and Compliance, Finance, Banking, Insurance and Mortgage with expertise in business requirement gathering and analysis, business process re-engineering, object-oriented design and modeling and project management with thorough knowledge on Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) principles and methodologies such as Agile, Rational Unified Process (RUP) and Waterfall.

Professional Summary

 

 

·         Extensive experience in interacting with Regulators and generating different Regulatory Reporting - ESMA, ECB, ASIC, APAC, SEC, CBR etc.

·         Experience in enhancing and improving workflow and infrastructure to meet regulatory rules and reporting requirements and defining standards and procedures.

·         Experience in using JIRA and Confluence as major tools for documentation

·         Lead the migration of regulatory infrastructure (databases and servers) to AWS. Worked with technical leads in setting up appropriate access to regulatory team in AWS

·         Strong project management skills

·         Strong knowledge of Advanced Excel and PowerPoint skills

·         Strong quantitative, analytical and organization skills

·         Proactive; the ability to respond creatively and quickly in a fast-paced, high-pressure, changing environment

·         Develop and manage relationships with different Business groups.

·         Served as a lead business analyst for development projects, working with internal clients and the technology team to improve business processes in terms of capability and stability.

·         Strong knowledge of Anti-Money Laundering (AML) Laws & Bank Secrecy Act (BSA), GLBA, and SOX regulations.

·         Expert in Mortgage underwriting and risk analysis experience (federal/state regulations)with knowledge of Life Insurance and Investment products.

·         Extensive understanding of Finance/Capital Markets (Fixed income Instruments Bonds, Options, Futures, ETFs, etc.) and Banking.

·         Experienced in Portfolio Management Systems, Performance Measurement and Attribution Systems and Financial Risk Management Systems.

·         Extensive knowledge of business analysis methodologies and concepts such as Unified Modeling Language (UML), Requirement gathering and analysis through JAD sessions and other conventional methods.

·         In depth knowledge of creating use case, activity, logical, component and deployment views to extract business process flows and workflows thereby helping development and quality assurance in understanding the requirements.

·         Extensive experience in documenting Business Requirements Document (BRD), Use Case and Functional Specifications, Systems Design Specifications (SDS), Systems Requirements Specifications (SRS), Workflows and Unified Modeling Language (UML) diagrams (Use Case, Class, Activity, Sequence and Collaboration).

·         Experience in gathering business and technical requirements from both formal and informal sessions through interviews, NetMeeting, questionnaire, video conferencing, JAD sessions and conference calls.

·         Extensive experience working with a wide variety of business and technology groups (includes developers, QA analysts, data architects, project managers) defining business requirements, functional requirements, non-functional requirements, use cases, test cases and creating detailed functional/technical specification documents.

·         Expertise in performing Gap Analysis using AS-IS and TO-BE business processes

·         Experienced in managing project teams of Business Analysts and Quality Assurance Analysts ensuring quality, budget and timeliness of the project.

·         Proficient in Data Modeling retaining concepts of RDBMS, Logical and Physical Data Modeling and Multidimensional Data Modeling Schema (Star schema, Snowflake schema, Facts and dimensions).

·         Expertise in Data Modeling, Data Analysis, Requirement Analysis, Data Migration, Data Profiling, Data mapping, Use Case Development and Dimension Modeling.

 

 

 

EDUCATION AND CERTIFICATION

 

Bachelor’s in Finance

LOMA certification on Insurance Fundamental Life, Annuities and Health Accreditation

 

TECHNICAL SKILLS

 

JIRA, Confluence, RUP, RequisitePro, Clear Case, Clear Quest, Rational Rose, UML, MS Visio, MS Office Suite, MS project, MS Visio, MS access, MS Excel, MS word, MS PowerPoint, MS Front Page, Agile, Rally, SQL Server, My SQL, Oracle, Erwin, Quality Center, Test Director, Windows NT/XP/2003/2007, SAS, COBOL

 

PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE

 

FITCH RATINGS, New York                                                                             2015 – Present

Business Analyst - Regulatory Data Team

 

 

Dual-headquartered in New York and London, Fitch Ratings is a leading provider of credit ratings, commentary and research. Dedicated to providing value beyond the rating through independent and prospective credit opinions, Fitch Ratings offers global perspectives shaped by strong local market experience and credit market expertise. Fitch Ratings and Fitch Solutions, along with Fitch Learning and BMI Research, are part of the Fitch Group, a global leader in financial information services with operations in more than 30 countries.

 

Regulatory Data Team at FITCH has a very fast paced environment. As a Business Analyst, I successfully adapted to priorities and assignments as needed, learnt to navigate the changes and provide high quality work, despite not knowing what may be coming next. My organizational and interpersonal skills really helped me do my job and contributed a lot to getting things done. As part of my role, I always ensured that I could be counted upon to fulfill any commitments made to others on behalf of the team. Have effectively completed all tasks assigned in a timely manner. Displaying harmonious and co-operative spirit has always been my priority at work.

 

 

Responsibilities:

 

• As part of Regulatory Data Team for FITCH - Gather and interpret business requirements into reporting deliverables for all Regulatory Reporting - ESMA, ECB, ASIC, APAC, SEC, MAS, FSB, SFC, CBR, SEC –NRSRO, to name a few.
• Interact with Regulators for any follow up questions or feedback on FITCH’s regulatory data submissions
• Lead the annual ESMA FEES project independently with regards to gathering requirements, scoping, developing and managing plans/schedules/deliverables  and ensuring project timelines, activities and resources are managed appropriately
• Competently liaise and coordinate with the respective internal groups, especially Finance and Business Relationship Management group. Worked with much autonomy on the multiple projects and demonstrated the ability to be left to oversee the projects working with other team members.
• Document all Regulatory Requirements on Confluence; that includes final requirements, FITCH’s interpretation, criteria summary, mapping, SQL query for the final submission and all communication relevant to the reports for future reference.
• Define procedures and standards
• To ensure all documentation is up to date for Internal audit

·         Manage stakeholder expectations and negotiating with project stakeholders to determine most accurate and appropriate definition of project scope and schedule

·         Work closely with information technology, application development, and analytical business units in the interpretation of requirements and the translation into design specifications

·         Data quality management & Data Mining - provide critical oversight of data integrity and consistency through analysis of large data sets using Excel; developing conclusions for Regulatory and Compliance reporting

 

·         Prepare documentation, knowledge articles and User Guides in Confluence. Training end users dashboard usage, preparing documentation and guides; provide user support

·         Ensure technical deliveries are designed and implemented following a strategic approach and aligned to the team’s guidelines and best practices.

·         Collaboratively work with IT development leads to understand and communicate to senior management strategies and solutions as it relates to all facets - including servers, databases, storage devices, etc.

·         Tracking performance against objectives and developing corrective strategies when objectives are not being met and resolving conflicting priorities in scope and schedules for multiple projects.

·         Prepare and record the necessary artifacts at various stages of projects as well as communicate with the appropriate business groups.

·         Provide high level executive reports and detailed updates on a continuous basis for all projects and make presentations to senior-level management as and when required.

·         Assist with defining and communicating change management, issues management, risk management, and documentation.

·         Lead status meetings and escalate issues as necessary and facilitate sessions to identify areas for improvement at the completion of projects.

• Demonstrated excellent time management skills and an ability to achieve results in a matrix management environment

 

 

 

 

 

CITI – NIR PROJECT, NEW JERSEY                                              JULY 2013 – Feb 2015   Business Analyst,

 

The recent CCAR Stress Test failure (June 2014) created another daunt to large banks like Citi. After the financial crises / turmoil, most of the ‘SIFI – Systemically Important Financial Institutions’ such as large banks are under tremendous regulatory pressures which are time-critical. NIR (Net Interest Revenue) system is one of the up-stream systems providing NIR data to Ruby engine for Revenue Forecasting which is needed as part of the PPNR (Pre-Provision-Net-Revenue) Stress Test Methodology implementation to address the CCAR test requirements. 

 

Responsibilities:-

 

·         Analyze data coming from different sources such as  US Retail Deposits and CTS deposits sourced from GENESIS.

 

·         Apply feathering Logic in CDA output to layer in GENESIS data with PEARL data and produce the same individual Product output files.

·         Co-ordinate with offshore team for status updates through hand-shake calls twice every day.

·         Document MDD for each product in scope.

·         Involved in documenting High level documentation of the project.

 

CITI- KYC PROJECT, New Jersey                                                 JUN 2012 – 2013 Jun

Business Analyst,

 

The Global AML (GAML) Program was launched in August 2010 to drive the coordinated and consistent implementation of improvements to Citi’s Business execution of Know Your Customer (KYC). The objectives of the program include optimizing the bank’s operating model, KYC processes, and enabling technologies. In select countries, in order to meet the Consent Order Commitments (to the OCC) and deploy a common technical solution to a significant percentage of the GCB population, a “Stage 1” solution for CitiKYC was to be  designed and implemented.

 

Responsibilities:-

 

·         Collecting and documenting Business Requirements Document (BRD), Use Case,  Functional Specifications (FRD) and Data Migration Strategy document

·         Examined, analyzed and modeled Test plans Use Case Model cases & Test procedures

·         Involved in walkthroughs and meetings with development team to discuss related issues.

·         Interacted with the developers to give an overview of the FRD specifications.

·         Efficiently interacted with designers and software developers to understand application functionality and navigational flow and keep them updated about business user’s specifications.

·         Managed all the requirements effectively and made them available to all team members and presented the testing defects and resolution in the project review meetings.

• Managed Deliverables such as Software release planning, status reports, issue resolutions for implementation, and minutes of various meetings.
• Main point of contact for Business and Source Systems for requirements review and clarification, validating requirements and issue submission including issue resolution

 

 

 

PNC Bank, New Jersey                                                              Feb 2011 – MAY 2012

Business Analyst

 

PNC Financial Services Group, Inc. is an American financial services corporation based in Pittsburgh whose operations include a regional banking franchise operating primarily in nineteen states and the District of Columbia, specialized financial businesses serving companies and government entities, and leading Turnkey Asset Management Program and processing businesses.PNC is the fifth largest bank in the United States (total branches), sixth largest bank by deposits in the United States, sixth largest by total assets, and the third largest bank off-premise ATM provider. The project was to enhance credit card securitization and risk analysis software. PNC bank like many other institutions offers securitizing credit card receivables and sales to the investors. The process involved pooling of the credit card receivables. My role involved Data identification, Data quality management, and ETL to the risk analysis software (calypso), and also gather the requirements for the securitizations from the SMEs and asset Managers. The project was based on PMBOK guidelines.

Responsibilities:

Control:

Exercised control throughout all the phases of the Project life cycle

Coordinated all aspects of projects such as initiation, planning including budgeting, scheduling, task assignment and tracking, change Management, status reporting and risk management.

 

 Initiate:

·         Involved in creating project Charter and SOW/Proposal for implementation of the project.
Developed vision document involving general vision of the core project's requirements, key features, and main constraints.

·         Documented an initial project glossary and an initial business case, which included business context, success criteria (revenue projection, market recognition, and so on), financial forecast and an initial risk assessment.

·         Analyzed the project coverage for modification and enhancement of various credit card and billing areas like Marketing, Payment, Getting Credit Bureau Report and Transaction

·         Facilitated team meetings to coordinate activities for project schedules, presented deliverables to the management, conducted JAD sessions to elicit requirements
Managed requirements to minimize scope issues. Understand all systems requirements within deliverable and provide feedback, collected requirements from customers, users and prioritized them.

  

Plan:

·         Analyzed and documented differences between the AS-IS and TO-BE processes.

·         Involved in the creation and maintenance of the Workflow plans and artifacts using UML.

·         Prepared Business Process Models that includes modeling of all the activities of the business from the conceptual to procedural level. Followed top down, leveled technique for building Business Process Models.

·         Performed gap analysis between current performance and desired performance (i.e. critical customer requirements).

·         Used Rational Rose to visually determine the proper structure, key elements and optimal design for database

·         Analyzed Business requirement document, developed functional requirement document (FRD) and got it approved by the client.

·         Wrote clear, concise detailed system requirements specification (SRS) documents and user documentation in accordance to guidelines and standards of a level where developers can interpret, design and develop the application with minimum guidance.

 

Execute:

·         Created and maintained Issues Log and ensured timely resolution of all items.

·         Supported User Acceptance testing (UAT) and collaborated with the QA team to develop test plans, test scenarios, test cases and test data to be used in testing, based on business requirements and application knowledge.

·         Reviewed Integration Test Plan for integration between modules.

·         Examined, analyzed and modeled Test plans Use Case Model cases & Test procedures

·         Involved in walkthroughs and meetings with development team to discuss related issues.

·         Interacted with the developers to report and correct bugs.

·         Efficiently interacted with designers and software developers to understand application functionality and navigational flow and keep them updated about business user’s specifications.

·         Managed all the requirements effectively and made them available to all team members and presented the testing defects and resolution in the project review meetings.

 

Close:

·         Involved in training of users and maintainers and executed roll-out of the product to the marketing, distribution, and sales teams

 

Environment:

PMBOK, Rational Rose, Rational Clear Case, MS Visio, MS Project 2010, Quality Center, SQL Server, MS Office (Word, Excel, PowerPoint).

 

 

Wells Fargo, New Jersey                                                            FEB, 2009 – JAN 2011

Business Analyst

 

Wells Fargo is a provider of banking, mortgage, investing, credit card, insurance, and consumer and commercial financial services. The project was to enhance the existing data ware house for the subject area of customers. The investment portfolios from Wells Fargo and other subsidiaries’ were then merged in to one unified database to provide possibility of the cross selling the combined products of Wells Fargo. The SDLC methodology followed was Rational Unified Process (RUP).

Responsibilities:

Inception:

• Carried out Risk Assessment, GAP analysis and Impact Analysis for the project.
• Involved in one-to-one interview sessions and JAD sessions with stakeholders, SME’s and business owners to discuss the scope of the conversion.
• Conducted Impact Analysis and Risk Assessment and worked on the mitigation plan to avoid the risks.
• Defined the impact on the existing services of Business Units, local impact of the transition on the organization and forthcoming challenges and issues related to the transition.
• Documented the mission statements and stake holders goals and the existing business flow of the data usage
• Responsible for analysis of the key source portfolio data
• Analyzed the applications that produce the data and applications that modify the data
• Documented the reporting needs for decision makers and marketing department and gathered issues about data-quality and maintaining versions and hierarchies
• Documented  high level use cases needed for Business Requirements Documents

Elaboration:

• Worked as a liaison among stakeholders both business and IT side in order to elicit, analyze, communicate validate and detail the requirements for changes to business processes and developed technical specifications
• Collected and studied the meta data about the transactional data and prepared detailed use cases
• Prepared the requirements and use case traceability matrix
• Developed Dimensional Data Model (MDM) using Erwin
• Identified the ODS sources and mapped them to the newly designed Dimensional model
• Defined the dimension model for the data marts and ratified the model against the reporting requirements
• Mapped data for the ETL process and wrote detailed specification for the ETL and Reports

 

Construction:

• Conducted walkthrough with the development team and stake holders.
• Analyzed the security implementation of the application with respect to users perspective
• Facilitated in creating the physical models of the Data Mart and in development of ETL programs and resolved issues
• Helped in realizing the reports needed by managers

 

Transition:

• Supported the UAT for reports, ETL and MDM access
• Provided necessary training for transition
• Provided support on maintenance issues

 

Environment:
RUP, Rational Rose, Rational Requisite Pro, Clear Quest, Clear Case, VB 6.0 Java Scripts, Business intelligence tools, Performance   Studio, SQL Server 2008, MS Project 2010, MS-Visio 2010, MS-Office 2010,MS share point, Test Director 7.1, SSIS, SSRS.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

KEY Bank, New Jersey                                                                NOV 2007 – JAN 2009

Business Analyst

 

Key Bank offers a broad array of financial services, including retail, business and corporate banking; cash management, capital markets, private wealth management; and insurance. The goal of the project was based on providing the payment division with specialization in Compliance (OFAC, AML), Straight through Processing (STP) and Enhancing SWIFT capabilities. This project followed Agile Scrum methodology

Responsibilities:

• Gathered users stories based on payments, compliance and treasury management industry (FED, SWIFT, CHIPS Payments, Settlement & Reconciliation, OFAC, AML, Straight through Processing, DDA, Messaging, Straight through Processing and EDI).
• Supported and consulted product owner in developing, maintaining and grooming product backlog.
• As Scrum Master maintained the capacity plan, iteration board, sprint backlog, velocity charts and burn down charts.
• Identified and removed impediments to the success of the sprint by working with every single team member.
• As Scrum Master identified and communicated dependencies and potential risks to the completion of the sprints including resources, costs and systems.
• Communicated project changes and status to the stakeholders on a daily basis, ensuring each proposed change goes through a systematic project impact analysis.
• As Scrum master tracked and ensured visibility of historical team metrics and progress of the iteration and release.
• Documented business scenarios on integrating STP engine with 3rd party Payment system such as ACI MTS, Montran, FircoSoft and Actimize. <li class="M