Sandhya looks to gain new knowledge wherever she goes

If Sandhya was a cricketer she would be an all-rounder.

In her long banking career she has spent time in Personal Banking, Consumer Loans, Mortgages, Wealth Management, Commercial Banking and now Investment Banking – to name a few. She’s now in the Periodic Review team as part of Client Lifecycle Management (CLM) in our Birmingham office.

For Sandhya, her career has been a series of learning opportunities as she’s taken the chance to take on new responsibilities. As well as moving across different parts of the industry she’s been lucky enough to work in Birmingham, London and Bangalore.

‘I’ve always been open to new experiences and as adaptable as I can be.  It’s 50% hard work and 50% being the right place at the right time.’

After spending three years in India, managing the migration of key trade operations tasks to our office in Bangalore, Sandhya returned to the UK and worked in our London office on an audit project in Structured Finance. Once she had taken that project to BAU phase it was time to look for her next opportunity.

‘There has been a clear shift in focus within the industry towards client governance and regulatory controls. There are so many opportunities in KYC right now – it has lots of potential’.

She joined the CLM team when it was in its infancy and set to work to centralise a consistent approach across EMEA – establishing processes and procedures for vendor engagement. In her current role heading up Periodic Review for Global Markets she’s responsible for creating a framework which enables the team to regularly assess all aspects of the client relationship, collaborating with the business and other control teams across the region and globally.

Sandhya feels that the bank provides limitless opportunities for those that can show the flexibility and are willing to learn new skills. The bank evolves constantly – in response to clients, the markets, advances in technology and changes in regulation. All of this creates unlimited career potential. Not everything will work out and there are no shortcuts to success but if you deliver high quality work your effort will be noticed – and rewarded.

‘I’ve never needed to have a specific background in a certain area. It’s your adaptable skillset that’s important.’