Avtar Sehmbi, questions answered

Avtar Sehmbi is a Chief Operating Officer and Chief Technology Officer. He leads global operations, technology, transformation and risk across business divisions of Fortune 50, Big 4 and FTSE 100 organisations. His career spans more than 60 markets in financial services, insurance, energy and telecommunications. He focuses on single accountability across run and change, combining business operations and deep technology in one executive remit, responsibilities that boards frequently separate across multiple appointments.

He is Global Managing Director, Portfolio Operations and International Markets COO at The Cigna Group, a Fortune 15 insurer with $275B revenue serving more than 185 million customer relationships across 30+ countries. He is accountable for the technology, operations and risk dimensions of International Markets expansion and US-led service capabilities, including organisational design, cost, execution, resilience, governance, technology, data and risk.

His strongest record is in complex transformation at scale, particularly where performance, regulation and execution intersect. That includes regulatory remediation and consent orders, integrating or separating businesses through mergers, acquisitions and divestitures, redesigning operating models to reduce structural cost, adopting AI at enterprise scale under emerging regulation such as the EU AI Act and DORA, and entering or expanding markets across Asia, the Gulf and Africa. Across these mandates he combines day-to-day operating accountability with transformation, while keeping regulators, boards and shareholder groups aligned.

He is suited to Group, divisional and regional Chief Operating Officer roles, including mandates that combine operations with technology, transformation and risk, in financial services and other regulated industries. He combines run-the-business accountability with turnaround, restructuring, operating-model redesign, cost transformation and strategic execution, alongside direct regulatory engagement and statutory board governance.

He is based in London and has built and run operations inside local markets across the United Kingdom, Europe, the Americas, the Gulf, Africa and Asia-Pacific. He is open to relocation to Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Hong Kong or Singapore.

He has held senior leadership roles in both sectors. At The Cigna Group he is Global Managing Director, Portfolio Operations and International Markets COO, where his work has spanned regulated market entry including the first international insurer branch licensed by the Saudi Central Bank, insurance-platform modernisation for 1M+ customers in India, claims administration reaching 250k customers across Asia, the Gulf and 16 African markets, AI governance and cross-border joint ventures. He also served as a Non-Executive Director on the CHSI statutory board.

At HSBC, a bank with $50B+ revenue and around 40 million customers, he progressed through four roles, culminating as Global Technology and Risk Chief Operating Officer for Investment and Wholesale Banking, giving him experience across both financial and non-financial risk.

Earlier he advised major financial services clients at Deloitte, including HSBC, Barclays, JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs, and previously ran a proprietary foreign-exchange venture.

He held four roles over five years, progressing from Global Head of Intelligence, Global Banking and Markets, through Chief Information Security Officer and Chief Technology Officer leadership and a secondment in Credit and Portfolio Risk, to Global Technology and Risk Chief Operating Officer.

As Delegated Risk Steward he led the operating-model and risk transformation of technology and operations under the bank's United States Department of Justice Deferred Prosecution Agreement and associated consent orders, restructuring 1.1k roles into a Basel-aligned model across Capital Markets, Asset Management, Liquidity and Cash Management, Securities Services, and Trade and Receivables Finance.

His remit combined organisational design, regulatory remediation, operational resilience, third-party risk, process simplification and shared-services transformation across more than 60 markets.

He spent more than nine years at Deloitte, progressing from Manager to Director, then Chief Information Security Officer and Markets Chief Technology Officer for the United Kingdom and Switzerland. He established the firm's technology-risk function, advised major financial services clients, and led post-Andersen merger technology rationalisation that delivered a double-digit cost-efficiency gain.

He built and ran Rite Group from 1992 to 1997, a wholesale distribution business serving clients including Ferrari, Ford, Christian Dior and Sony. He then founded The Currency Times from 1997 to 1999, a proprietary foreign-exchange venture in which he owned the P&L, risk and balance sheet. He later moved into technology and operations at WorldCom, leading network and application standardisation and acquisition integration for International Markets.

Born in the United Kingdom to immigrant parents, he started work at eleven on a market stall in London. In his early twenties he scaled the family retail business into an international wholesale operation. Managing currency exposure across that supply chain led him into proprietary foreign-exchange trading and, later, into global technology and operations roles.

He has directed the technology, operations and risk workstreams across deals approaching $80 billion. This has included vendor and third-party due diligence, integration and separation, transitional service agreement management, competitive data segregation and wind-down.

Examples include the integration of a claims platform adjudicating for tens of millions of members, ring-fenced under competition commitments, and a six-market Asia-Pacific separation where transitional services were exited three months early with buyer and regulatory approval.

He has engaged supervisory authorities across the United Kingdom, United States, Europe, the Gulf, India and Asia-Pacific, including the Bank of England, PRA, FCA, OCC, HKMA, MAS, the Saudi Central Bank and IRDAI. At HSBC he directed technology-risk remediation under a United States Department of Justice consent order, reducing risk exposure to satisfy the order.

He has led the technology, operations and risk work supporting regulatory authorisation and market access, including the first international insurer branch licensed by the Saudi Central Bank, as well as work in India, the United Arab Emirates and Belgium. Beyond licensed entry he has built greenfield technology and operations capabilities across Asia, the Gulf and Africa, expanding through locally licensed partners rather than local balance sheets.

He has led data protection, privacy, data residency and sovereign-data requirements globally, including the EU AI Act, DORA, HIPAA, the UK Data Protection Act and IRDAI requirements, and has engaged supervisory authorities on four continents.

He has led front-to-back enterprise systems including architecture, cloud, automation, machine learning, data platforms, responsible AI, cybersecurity, payments and API platforms across banking, insurance, energy, telecommunications and professional services.

Examples include rebuilding an insurer's technology landscape to a regulatory glidepath, building predictive risk and sentiment capabilities within investment banking, and using API-first platforms and partner distribution models to support expansion across Asia, the Gulf and 16 African markets.

He has held the Chief Information Security Officer role four times, at Deloitte for the United Kingdom and Switzerland, at British Gas, at HSBC Global Banking and Markets, and at The Cigna Group alongside the Chief Technology Officer seat. He holds CISSP, CISM and CISA, and previously held SC clearance.

His work has included major regulatory remediation programmes, among them the Bank of England's CBEST threat-led testing framework across the Investment Bank under PRA supervision, and the protection of critical payment and infrastructure environments within UK Critical National Infrastructure.

He chaired the Cloud Centre of Excellence at The Cigna Group and has led enterprise-scale migration. At Centrica he migrated mission-critical trading, wholesale and retail platforms to hybrid cloud, retiring significant legacy run costs. He has also set architecture and control standards for cloud adoption across more than 30 markets, covering data residency, sovereign requirements and third-party risk.

He rebuilt the India technology landscape for 1M+ customers, taking the new platform live, retiring the incumbent and meeting the IRDAI glidepath, underpinning an insurer growing at double digit rates. He has also led post-merger technology rationalisation and network modernisation programmes in earlier roles.

His work with analytics, automation and machine learning predates the current generative-AI cycle. As Chair of the Ethical AI and Cloud Centres of Excellence he led the governance of AI adoption across more than 30 markets, covering data residency, model validation, cybersecurity and third-party model risk.

His regulatory preparedness work has included EU AI Act and DORA readiness alongside broader regional risk-management and assurance requirements. The remit ran from policy and use-case classification through model lifecycle, inventories, data residency and third-party model risk to the assurance evidence supervisors require.

Use cases under that governance spanned agents serving policy and product information out of aged document estates to both internal teams and customers, translation and multilingual services, document and image digitisation replacing paper handling, data ingestion and search, risk scoring and assessment models, and geospatial data. Each was classified and assessed for productivity gain against model, data and third-party risk.

He established the AI Centre of Excellence for International Markets, putting the control framework in place as the technology scaled rather than after it.

Both, although the distinction matters. His direct applied machine-learning work includes investment-banking intelligence and sentiment capabilities that converted external data into decision support and early-warning signals. He has also directed anti-fraud controls in banking, and through his own research programme develops prediction engines and statistical decisioning methods.

At enterprise level his more recent role has centred on making AI deployable at scale, establishing the governance, model-risk, data and assurance framework around adoption.

Separately he has led large-scale digital, automation and platform transformation across insurance and banking, including claims administration, API-first distribution, Global Capability Centres and legacy-platform replacement. Those programmes built the operating environment into which AI can be industrialised, rather than being AI achievements in themselves.

He founded and directs Currency Times, an independent quantitative-research programme developing forecasting and prediction methods using artificial intelligence and machine learning alongside statistical physics, probability theory, information geometry and game theory.

The programme holds nearly 80 years of market and economic data in immutable source form, so every derived result can be rebuilt from source. It is published openly at thecurrencytimes.com, with its methods scored against published benchmarks.

His remit has spanned financial and non-financial risk, including technology, cyber, fraud, conduct, credit and model risk, together with consent-order remediation and supervisory engagement.

He restructured 1.1k roles into a Basel-aligned model at HSBC, separating the first and second lines of defence, and established a Gartner-benchmarked enterprise-risk framework at Centrica that gave the group a single view of risk, released capital for reinvestment and cut risk exposure by double digits.

At HSBC he led the restructuring and build-out of technology, operations and non-financial risk functions under that enforcement. He directed the operational technology risk taxonomy across 60 markets and led CBEST remediation under PRA supervision, engaging the OCC, NFA, HKMA and MAS.

Structural cost reduction has been a recurring part of his operating mandates. Examples include establishing Global Capability Centres in India, Ireland and Singapore through a 1.2k-role migration at The Cigna Group, reducing technology-control costs at HSBC, consolidating Centrica into shared services, and rationalising infrastructure at WorldCom, each delivering double-digit savings.

The common approach is to remove structural cost through operating-model redesign, sourcing, automation and simplification rather than short-term expenditure freezes. At HSBC he also automated assurance across tier one suppliers, giving the bank a single view of thematic and concentration risk.

He served as a Non-Executive Director on the CHSI statutory board at The Cigna Group from 2020 to 2022, with oversight of strategy, performance, capital allocation and succession. He also served on the Smart Energy Code Security Sub-Committee from 2012 to 2014, and has represented head office as shareholder to joint-venture partners across nine markets, rather than as a director of the ventures themselves.

He has led large cross-border organisations through significant transformation, including workforce transitions into Global Capability Centres, balancing delivery, workforce transition, engagement and culture through substantial organisational change.

He has also built functions from inception three times, the technology-risk function at Deloitte, the intelligence function at HSBC and the AI Centre of Excellence at The Cigna Group. Each was created rather than inherited. His approach is to give people work slightly beyond what they have proved, stay close enough to support the stretch, and be clear with them about where they stand.

He designed global cash-management technology for Save the Children. He served on the Smart Energy Code Security Sub-Committee supporting the United Kingdom's carbon targets, and while holding SC clearance advised on UK Government and national-infrastructure mandates, and separately delivered the Information Commissioner's Office Think Privacy programme.

Executive Education at the University of Cambridge in Financial Accounting and Capital Markets, and at Yale University in Financial Markets. CISSP, CISM and CISA. SC clearance previously held.

He is a member of the Forbes Technology Council and the Fast Company Executive Board. He has published on sovereign artificial intelligence, AI governance, Global Capability Centres, and technology and operational leadership. His central argument is that enterprises need a single governed system that turns data into foresight, an enterprise AI oracle, rather than disconnected pilots.

His work has appeared across business and financial publications including Forbes, Entrepreneur, Fast Company, Gulf News and LSE News, among others.