01 / About
A Data and AI-led consultant, turning banking data into growth at scale.

Financial Services professional with 12+ years of experience, combining an MBA with a Computer Science engineering background. Delivers measurable results for leading banks across KSA, the UAE and the wider GCC, spanning cards and payments modernization, AI and data-led transformation, and the launch of liability, lending and digital products worth over SAR 1 billion. Works across retail, commercial and Islamic banks, capital markets, central banks and regulatory bodies, and insurance.

Banking Transformation
Product Management and P&L
Digital Transformation
Data and AI
Cards and Payments
Wealth Management
Islamic Finance
Strategic Partnerships

Banking Transformation

Reshaping operating models, journeys and P&L for retail, commercial and Islamic banks.

Cards and Payments

Modernizing card issuance and management, and end-to-end platform migrations.

Data and AI

Analytics portfolios, ML models and segmentation that turn data into growth.

02 / Selected Experience
Mandates and milestones.
0%
Personal finance growth, Expat segment
0%
Credit-card sales growth
SAR 1.1B
New liabilities from one product
0.9k
New-to-bank customers added
Accenture, Financial Services 2021 to Present, Riyadh
AI and Data, Major UAE Bank
Ran the analytics portfolio and built a K-means customer segmentation framework for data-led growth.
Payments and Cards, Largest Bank in KSA
Led a 13-month cards management platform migration end to end, modernizing credit-card issuance and management.
Retail Liabilities, Leading ME Bank
Built and launched a global liabilities product: 76.9k new-to-bank customers and SAR 1.1B in liabilities.
Expat Segment P&L, Leading KSA Bank
Grew personal finance sales 17% and credit cards 31% through process and risk-criteria rework.
Trade and Supply-Chain Finance, GCC Bank
Transformation lead on a 0-to-1 SCF platform implementation across four countries.
Customer Experience, Top KSA Bank
Reset the customer-complaints strategy, cutting complaint volumes and resolution times.
Earlier Roles
2021
AU Small Finance Bank
Product Manager, Secured and MSME Lending. Roadmap across CRM, LMS and LOS; blockchain security-ownership pilot.
2018-2020
Muthoot Fincorp
Lead, Strategy and Transformation; Regional Manager. ML and RPA rollout, core-banking move to Nucleus FinnOne, team of 144.
2012-2016
CSC / DXC Technology
Data and AI and Product Developer on RiskMaster. Four years full-stack; on-premises to SaaS on AWS.
03 / Data and AI Work
Selected data and AI projects.

Hands-on machine-learning work that supports banking growth, risk and customer experience, built in Python.

Mass-segment customer segmentation

K-means clustering to define actionable retail micro-segments for targeted growth initiatives.

Pythonscikit-learnK-means

Credit-risk scoring, PD model

Probability-of-default model to support underwriting and portfolio decisions.

PythonLogistic Reg.Risk

Retail churn prediction

Early-warning model flagging at-risk customers for proactive retention.

PythonXGBoostRetention

Next-best-action recommender

Recommendation engine matching customers to the most relevant product or offer.

PythonRecsysCX
04 / Foundations
Education and certifications.
Education
MBA, IIM Shillong
Indian Institute of Management, part of the IIM system, the most prestigious and selective business schools in India. Admission through the CAT and GMAT at single-digit acceptance rates.
B.Tech, Computer Science, AMU
Aligarh Muslim University, founded in 1875, one of India's oldest and most respected central universities and consistently ranked among the country's top institutions (NIRF).
760
GMAT Score
A top-percentile result on the global management admissions test
Certifications
Machine Learning, Stanford
The foundational, globally recognised ML course (Andrew Ng). A rigorous grounding in supervised and unsupervised learning applied to real prediction and automation.
Leading with Analytics and AI, Kellogg
Executive program from Kellogg, Northwestern, a top-ranked global business school, on leading data and AI driven strategy and decision making.
MCPD and MCTS, Microsoft
Microsoft Certified Professional Developer and Technology Specialist. Validate hands-on ability to design and build enterprise applications, the engineering foundation behind the product work.
05 / LinkedIn
My public profile, in one place.
Zakir
Zakir Zafar Mohammad
Banking transformation, Cards and Payments and Data and AI across the GCC
Riyadh, Saudi Arabia   |   3,500+ followers   |   500+ connections
Accenture
Financial Services
IIM Shillong
MBA

Let's connect

Follow along for perspectives on banking transformation, cards and payments, and data and AI in financial services across the GCC.

Cards and Payments modernization
Platform migrations and issuance
Data and AI-led growth
Segmentation, risk and CX models
Retail and Islamic banking
Product, P&L and go-to-market
06 / Contact
Open to strategic conversations.

Based in Riyadh and working across the GCC. The fastest way to reach me is email or LinkedIn.

Available for banking transformation, Islamic-banking mandates, product launches, and data-led growth programs across the GCC region.