Waqar.

Waqar Ali

EVP | Fintech Leader | 20+ Years in Core Banking & Digital Transformation

Overview

Senior Fintech Executive with over 20 years of experience driving large-scale digital transformations, core banking upgrades, and high-volume retail technology operations. Proven track record in reducing COB times by 35%, maintaining 99.9% uptime for 100k+ daily transactions, and re-architecting legacy systems for cloud-native scalability. Expert in Temenos T24, enterprise architecture, and leading high-performing support organizations.

Lahore, Pakistan

Experience

May 2026 – Present

WORK

EVP-Senior Manager Retail Technology Support

Mashreq Bank Pakistan Ltd

Pakistan

To oversee , govern and provide support for Retail Technology applications portfolio in Pakistan.

•Ensure the smooth operation and continuous improvement of multiple critical applications within Pakistan Digital Retail Banking.

•Oversee the management of both Run and Change activities for these applications, ensuring maximum availability, stability, and performance.

•Coordinate with business and technical teams to address issues, implement changes, and provide comprehensive support to the business.

•Ensure compliance with organizational policies and procedures.

•Prepare and present regular status reports to management and stakeholders on support and change management activities.

•Provide training and knowledge transfer to team members and stakeholders

Key Achievements

→Leading a team of 12 support managers overseeing 12 critical retail banking applications for Pakistan Digital Retail Banking.

→Managing a high-volume environment processing over 100,000 transactions daily, with increasing scale as digital onboarding accelerates.

→Consistently maintaining 99.9% system availability and uptime for all critical digital retail banking applications.

Mar 2023 – May 2026

WORK

Application and Integration Architect

Habib Bank (Ltd) Pakistan

Pakistan

To collaborate with all relevant teams in HBL to enable transformation within bank’s digital ecosystem and engage in Core Banking transformation project ENZO based on Temenos TRANSACT and TDH.

•Establish the application architecture layouts including application communication diagrams, matrices, etc.

•Collaborate with the Dev/Ops teams and develop and manage changes in application architecture across the enterprise.

•Define information elements, composite structure, logical relationships and constraints, taxonomy, and derivation rules for all applications

•Design and implement integration strategies across enterprise applications and platforms.

•To oversee system interoperability, scalability, and performance optimization

•Define IT application landscape with a focus on application rationalization and modernisation including cloud migration and API-led integration

•Liaise with the SOA/Microservice Dev Teams to manage reusability of applications, service across the board.

•Reviewing technology solutions being implemented for the bank while keeping intact the enterprise-wide business needs within the prevailing enterprise technical standards.

•Integrating trends in application architecture in application development projects.

•Design, implement, and manage continuous integration and continuous deployment (CI/CD) pipelines

•Work closely with development, operations, and security teams to ensure smooth and efficient delivery processes.

Key Achievements

→Re-architected legacy applications with modern integration patterns, replacing outdated mechanisms to enable faster time-to-market for new features.

→Refactored and eliminated redundant APIs and services, streamlining the enterprise application landscape and reducing technical debt.

→Consolidated cross-domain business requirements into a centralized, scalable solution, improving system reliability and decomposition.

→Improved system stability, allowing the engineering team to shift focus from maintenance to delivering new functional features.

Temenos TRANSACTTDHSOAMicroservicesCI/CDCloud MigrationAPI-led integration

Apr 2018 – Mar 2023

WORK

Unit Head Application Administration (CBS & AUX)

Allied Bank (Ltd) Pakistan

Pakistan

To overall administer, manage and monitor the bank’s Core Banking & other auxiliary systems.

•Responsible for project planning and keeping it aligned with ITG’s Strategic and Operation plans.

•Foresee activities related to upgrade, deployment, automation, monitoring & maintenance of Core banking and Auxiliary systems including but not limited to Temenos T24,SWIFT,Big Data ,OBI, INCHEQS, EFS, CLINK, RAAST,AUTOMIC.

•Capacity planning, optimization of Core banking and Auxiliary systems keeping in view the industry best practices.

•Ensure applications/systems availability as per their service level objectives.

•Perform a continuous cycle of service improvement to the production services through service continuity, availability, capacity planning and performance management.

•Co-ordinate with vendors, technical and business teams for smooth banking operations and ensure timely resolution of reported issues through relevant stakeholders along with its RCA.

•To report IT Incidents at relevant forum and continuously monitor incident response execution activities with concerned functions till rectification.

•To automate daily operational critical tasks in order to mitigate any human error and less dependency on humans.

•Validate project status and Oversees project status, authorize vendor payments and manages conflicts within the teams.

•To address application level information security related vulnerabilities by taking corrective and preventive measures.

•To address audit observations both internal and external against various applications by having interviews, walkthroughs and providing relevant data. In case of gap take measures to rectify the observations for its compliance.

•Continuously monitors progress of reporting functions to ensure meeting of project deadlines.

•Take part in planning and implementation of DR activity of various applications.

•Plan, organize, lead resources to meet the application administration’s department targets.

•Coach, mentor, motivate and supervise team members and influence them to take positive action and accountability for their assigned work

•Any other assignment assigned by higher management as and when desired.

Key Achievements

→Led the upgrade and automation of Temenos T24 core banking and auxiliary systems, ensuring stability and performance through continuous process optimization.

→Reduced Close of Business (COB) processing time by 35% through rigorous system optimization and process refinement.

→Achieved sub-second transaction processing times and maintained a peak throughput of 350 TPS during peak hours without performance deterioration.

Temenos T24SWIFTOracle Big DataOBIINCHEQSEFSCLINKRAASTAUTOMIC

2015 – Mar 2018

WORK

Manager Application Administration (CBS)

Allied Bank (Ltd) Pakistan

Pakistan

Manage projects related to application deployment, automation, maintenance of Core Banking & other auxiliary systems.

•Manage projects related to application deployment, automation, maintenance of Core Banking & other auxiliary systems.

•Capacity planning, optimization of core banking system keeping in view the industry best practices.

•Plan, organize, lead resources to meet the application administration’s department targets.

•Plan and implement application high availability solutions

•Define and implement application health check procedures.

•R&D to facilitate administration task and ongoing projects.

•Managing Application Administration team, assign projects/tasks to application administrator and priorities tasks and define time lines to complete tasks.

•Ensure the 24X7 applications/system availability, log analysis and ensure performance optimization.

•Implement application security and auditing

•Co-ordinate with vendors, technical and business team to resolve issue.

•Perform a continuous cycle of service improvement to the production services through service continuity; availability and capacity planning and management.

•Define and implement Service Level Objectives (SLOs) and ensure the agreed service levels are met.

Nov 2012 – Dec 2014

WORK

Manager Data Life Cycle Management & Extractions

Allied Bank (Ltd) Pakistan

Pakistan

Data Life Cycle Management of the Core Banking System (T24) in terms of Archiving/Purging of the data as per Bank’s Policies.

•Data Life Cycle Management of the Core Banking System (T24) in terms of Archiving/Purging of the data as per Bank’s Policies.

•Devise and suggest efficient archival mechanism to teams.

•Planning, policy approval, implementation and refinement/optimization of archival processes.

•Execute archival /purging schedule as per plan.

•Prepare retrieval protocols of archived data & data stacking procedure as how to place/segment archived data into Online, Near Online and Offline modes.

•Efficient Data Extraction of applications from Core Banking System (T24) for MIS reporting purpose.

•Manage overall T24 System Administration.

•Analyze requirements specifications and translate them to task specifications for junior resources.

•To prioritize and meet project deadlines.

•To analyze developed programs and processes, and make recommendations which yield a more performance effective product.

•To analyze problems in an efficient and time effective manner.

•To interact professionally within team using effective inter-personal and communication skills.

•Provide periodic and accurate analysis reports to senior management.

•Leads and coordinates project update meetings, and documents project status and issues.

•Research and recommend software development tools to management based on the analysis of performance, complexity and maintainability.

•Maintaining systems by monitoring and managing software defects.

•Coordinates changes of considerable consequences to the scope and schedule of the projects.

•Working closely with management team in evaluating current systems and making decisions on future development.

•To conduct and assist in interviews for hiring process.

Temenos T24

Aug 2008 – Nov 2012

WORK

Software Engineer –Team Lead

Allied Bank (Ltd) Pakistan

Pakistan

Performance Management, CDB Data Extraction & Loading, and T24 Interfaces.

•Lead a team of Performance Management of T-24 for its Close of Business Process and OLTP/OLAP.

•Recommended various measures and guide development teams to improve performance and functioning of the various system modules of the Production system which includes indexing, code optimization and data archival.

•Lead a team for ETL development (for Bank’s MIS Reporting purpose) for CDB Data Provision.

•Core developer for data provisioning area and expert in its analysis and design.

•Perform various analytics to cater end user requirements.

•Provide MIS data to cater various business users requirements.

•Prepared reports for end users and senior management.

•Worked as a Core Developer to develop various T24 Interfaces which includes VercNIC, Unisign, PersonalizedChequebook, Visa Credit and Debit Cards.

•Involved in analysis, development and testing of interfaces.

•Writing unit test cases and technical specification documents.

•Provide active support to T24 users related to T-24 Interfaces.

JavajBaseIBM AIXOracle PL/SQLETL

Mar 2007 – Aug 2008

WORK

Software Engineer

Systems (Ltd) Pakistan

Pakistan

Making of business planning system for Liz Claiborne, USA. An Enterprise Resource Planning system that targets the clothing business. The system is used for financial, assortment and strategic planning.

•Worked on different functional areas of this application.

•Completely involved in its design documentation, technical documentation and implementation.

•Writing technical specification, unit test cases and for different artifacts according to UML and object oriented concepts.

JavaJSPServletAppletBeansAJAXOracleUML

Nov 2004 – Jan 2006

WORK

Software Engineer

CureMD (Pvt) Ltd Pakistan

Pakistan

A Medical Health Management System for the various clients in the hospitals of South and North America.

•Involved in implementation, writing functional specification, user manual and design document of these and various modules of the product.

•Worked on Document Image Scanning (DIS) modifications to save scanned images/documents in binary form in the database.

•Customized the whole application in Spanish version (CuidaMED) for a client in Latin America.

•Customized parts of the application for Indian Heath Services (IHS).

Analyst/Designer

It is used to handle large-scale information efficiently e.g. simultaneous transactions at different places. Different Analysis, Design and Testing models of the system were developed using UML

UML

Education

2005 – 2007

MS (CS)

LUMSSpecialization in Computer Science

GPA: 2.93

Societies & Activities

Active member of IEEE-LUMS web team

2000 – 2004

BCS (Hons)

GCU, LahoreSpecialization in Computer Science

GPA: 3.6

Societies & Activities

Active member of Government College University Computer Science SocietyActive member of Government College University Political Science Society/Athletic Society

1998 – 2000

FSc (Pre Engineering)

GCU, LahoreSpecialization in Pre Engineering

1996 – 1998

Matric (Science)

St Anthony’s High School, LahoreSpecialization in Science

Societies & Activities

Captain of the winning cricket team in School

Impact & Recognition

Awards

St Anthony’s High School

Gold Medal

For being the top student in school for three consecutive years

Higher Secondary School Board Lahore

Scholarship

For getting A+ grade in matriculation

Professional Certifications

Moving Minds

ITIL Foundation

Coursera

Agile with Atlassian Jira

Microsoft

Microsoft Azure Fundamentals

RedHat

RedHat- Container Adoption Boot Camp (DO700)

Social Impact & Activities

Digital TransformationOTHER

Digital Transformation Session

Attended session on Digital Transformation

SAS TrainingWORKSHOP

SAS BI and ETL/DI training

Attended SAS BI and ETL/DI training

Skills & Interests

Java/J2EE

TECHNICAL

IBM WebSphere Application Server

TOOL

Jenkins

TOOL

Docker

TECHNICAL

C++

TECHNICAL

OpenLaszlo

TECHNICAL

Areas of Expertise

ITIL Foundation

Problem Solving

Project Management

Vendor Management

Let's Connect

I'd love to hear from you. Feel free to reach out.

These unlock once you finish onboarding and publish your profile.

Talk to AI Waqar

Online

I am an AI representation of Waqar. Ask me anything about their experience, skills, or working style.