The joins between accounts became my responsibility

My early accounting work taught me that a tidy total can conceal a confused question. A transaction may have been recorded correctly in each individual schedule and still appear twice when someone combines them. I became interested in the joins between accounts: what had been included, what had been eliminated and which explanation a reader would carry away. That interest eventually became a leadership responsibility, including when the misunderstanding came from a paper I had approved myself.

I completed commerce studies in May 1999 and joined Verqelni Service Accounts the following month. Six of us supported client records under a senior accountant. I prepared schedules and traced invoices, without authority to sign client accounts or move their funds. The work required patience with differences that looked small until they changed the meaning of a balance. I learned to ask for the source of a number before accepting the confidence with which it had been repeated.

In 2005 I became a finance team lead with eight colleagues and ₹64 lakh annual delivery expense. Our clients retained their own approval and reporting responsibilities. I had to make reviews useful to people who knew the underlying business better than our accounting team did. A consistent template helped, but it could not decide whether two schedules described separate costs or different views of the same cost. I began asking reviewers to explain the relationship between the schedules, rather than merely confirm that each one added correctly.

Zerqlavi appointed me expense manager in 2011. Twelve colleagues worked within ₹1.7 crore annual function expense. Joining a life insurer introduced a longer relationship between today’s activity and continuing obligations. Premium measures, operating expense and actuarial estimates served different purposes. I learned to work with their owners without treating every number as interchangeable evidence of performance. My remit was expense analysis and control, not product pricing, investment selection or authority to determine a claim. Understanding those limits made my questions more precise.

The financial-controller appointment followed in 2017. Twenty-one colleagues worked within ₹3.6 crore annual function expense. In 2020 I approved the consolidated expense view that counted the central pool and its allocations together. The error had survived because the two components each reconciled separately. I had not made the combined account explain the elimination between them. Correcting the paper required a candid conversation with management and a review of twenty-four centres. I resisted describing the lower corrected total as an efficiency result. We had improved the account, while the economic expense itself had not disappeared.

I became CFO in 2022. Four leads now coordinate thirty finance colleagues, and I report to Dinesh Qerqavi. I present financial papers to directors and the audit committee by invitation; these appearances are not director service. Working with Miriam Delqvashi has reinforced the distinction between reconciling an estimate through the financial account and deciding the actuarial estimate itself. Finance must understand the explanation well enough to expose a missing movement, while respecting the professional judgement on which the obligation depends.

The 2023 claims review and 2025 administration investment brought that discipline into decisions with different commercial pressures. One proposal treated lower cash payments as evidence that the claims burden had improved. The other described the value of released staff time as though it would all reduce payroll. Neither required rejecting the underlying work. Both required a different explanation of its economics. I wanted management to decide with the continuing obligation, redeployed effort and additional running costs still visible. A useful investment could deserve support for service reasons without being dressed as a faster financial return. I also asked programme owners to identify who would verify each claimed benefit after approval. Finance could check the expense account, while operations had to explain what the reassigned colleagues were doing and whether the intended service improvement had appeared. Neither account could stand in for the other.

I am looking for a mandate where the CFO is expected to improve the decision, including by revising an earlier finance conclusion. A possible outside appointment would require further preparation and a company-specific assessment of suitability, relationships and capacity. My experience is in making financial accounts intelligible without flattening their professional distinctions. I would bring that discipline to a board while learning its business, resisting the temptation to act as an additional controller and recognising where another specialist’s judgement is needed.

Open to Board appointments · Executive opportunities

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