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Rao Eswara
GLOBAL BANKING & FINANCIAL SERVICES EXECUTIVE
BUILDING, GOVERNING, AND SCALING ENTERPRISE PRODUCTS AND EXAM-READY COMPLIANCE PROGRAMS AT GLOBAL BANKS, HEDGE FUNDS, PRIVATE EQUITY, RIA’S, BROKER-DEALERS, AND DIGITAL ASSET MANAGEMENT FIRMS
Phone: (786).792.9898
Email: rao.eswara@fs-executive.com
Address: 36 Journal Square, Suite 1602 Jersey City. NJ 07306
Executive Summary
Accomplished financial services executive with 23+ years of demonstrable success at Global Fortune 100 Banks, Broker Dealers, Hedge Funds, and Digital Asset Management firms and uniquely qualified for Executive Management roles. Mr. Eswara has consistently delivered transformative results across product innovation, risk management, regulatory compliance, operational excellence leveraging emerging technologies such as Artificial Intelligence, Blockchain, Quantum Computing, Multi-Cloud environments to enhance customer experience and revenue growth while mitigating regulatory risk and reducing costs.
By fostering strategic partnerships and collaboration among lines of business, legal, operations, IT, compliance, and executive leadership, Mr. Eswara has streamlined governance processes, cut compliance deficiencies, and secured investor confidence—evidenced by hundreds of millions in operational loss reductions. Whether designing advanced risk modeling approaches, overseeing critical infrastructure upgrades, or advising on strategic product rollouts, he has aligned innovation with prudent risk management to achieve sustainable, profitable growth.
SKILLS
EXPERIENCE
(Select Each Tab below)
Citadel
Led product strategy for a front-to-back, cross-asset platform built to meet the scale, speed, and control demands of alternative-investment trading. Defined the vision, roadmap, and operating model across execution, post-trade, risk, collateral, securities lending, and compliance—translating complex business and regulatory requirements into measurable gains in control, efficiency, and capital optimization.
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Defined the product vision and multi-year roadmap for execution, post-trade processing, risk, collateral and margin, securities lending, and compliance as trading, operations, and regulatory complexity expanded—aligning front-, middle-, and back-office teams around shared priorities, KPIs, MRDs/PRDs, and OKRs.
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Built an Agile product operating model with dedicated product owners across core domains to improve delivery discipline for business-critical workflows—leading backlog refinement, sprint planning, SIT/UAT gating, release management, and change control to raise predictability and execution quality.
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Delivered post-trade capabilities across OTC and listed derivatives in response to growing operational and margin complexity—streamlining trade capture, matching, valuation, portfolio reconciliation, exposure reporting, haircut calculations, and active margin workflows to support strategy-specific collateral requirements.
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Launched real-time risk and rules-based investment-guidelines capabilities to strengthen portfolio controls and meet global regulatory obligations—embedding dashboards, breach alerts, transaction-reporting controls, clearing-threshold monitoring, and automated notifications to improve issue detection at the point of trade booking.
Outcomes:
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Reduced daily uncollateralized exposure by up to 60% through collateral-optimization and rehypothecation policy enhancements.
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Cut collateral settlement times by approximately 40% across 40+ markets by improving margin-call, dispute, and optimization workflows.
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Strengthened early detection of potential limit breaches and margin shortfalls by tying real-time monitoring to trade booking, improving trader decision support and first-line controls.
EDUCATION
1995-97
Master's Degree
M.S. in Aerospace Engineering
Villanova University, Philadelphia, PA
2005-07
MBA - Finance
M.B.A in Finance
Columbia Unviersity, New York, NY
1999-01
Master's Degree
M.S. in Computer Science & Artificial Intelligence
Drexel University, Philadelphia, PA
1995-97
Master's Degree
M.S. in Aerospace Engineering
Villanova University, Philadelphia, PA
1991-95
Bachelors in Engineering
Bachelors in Engineering
Andhra University, India
EXPERTISE
Hedge Fund & Alternative Investment Governance
Agentic AI, LLM Strategy, AI Model Development & Model Risk Management
Real-Time Payments Risk, Fraud Controls & Operational Resilience
Advise hedge funds and alternative investment platforms on operating model design, portfolio risk governance, counterparty oversight, investor protection, and scalable infrastructure that supports complex strategies without compromising control.
Lead the design, governance, and scaled deployment of agentic AI and LLM capabilities across banking workflows. Build exam-ready AI operating models by aligning model development, validation, monitoring, prompt and data governance, human oversight, third-party risk controls, and board-level reporting to enterprise risk, compliance, and resilience standards.
Designs risk and compliance frameworks for real-time payments, instant payments, fraud prevention, sanctions controls, exception handling, transaction monitoring, and 24/7 operational resilience.
MiCA, Digital Assets & Tokenised Fund Structures
Agentic AI, LLM Enablement, AI Model Development & Model Risk Management for Private Equity
Commercial Banking, Treasury Services & Risk Transformation
Supports fund managers and platforms at the intersection of traditional funds and digital assets, including MiCA-readiness, crypto exposure, CASP/vendor due diligence, custody and control design, disclosure, distribution and tokenised fund operating models. Helps firms build cross-border digital-asset strategies that are commercially credible and regulator-ready.
Advise private equity firms and portfolio companies on deploying agentic AI, LLMs, and predictive models to enhance deal sourcing, diligence, valuation support, portfolio monitoring, etc.. Establish disciplined model development and risk governance frameworks covering data quality, validation, scenario analysis, access controls, model monitoring, portfolio oversight, and investment committee reporting so AI can be scaled with speed, rigor, and investor confidence.
Helps commercial banks modernize treasury services, real-time payments, client onboarding, cross-border payments operations, governance, and risk controls to improve efficiency, customer experience, and sustainable growth.
Financial Crimes Compliance: BSA/AML, KYC & Sanctions
Integrated IT, AI, Cloud Audit & Third-Party Risk Assurance
Cybersecurity, Data Privacy & Multi-Cloud Transformation
Builds and remediates financial crimes compliance programs covering BSA/AML, KYC, CIP, CDD, EDD, sanctions screening, fraud prevention, and transaction monitoring. Define and ensure adherence to policies, procedures, controls, standards, industry frameworks, and best practices.
Provides independent assurance for U.S. banks across IT audit, AI and model-governance review, cloud-control effectiveness, and third-party risk management. Evaluates whether technology governance, tool and model inventories, validation and effective challenge, multi-cloud security and resiliency, provider due diligence, independent testing, remediation, and board reporting operate as one integrated control environment rather than disconnected point reviews.
Leads enterprise cybersecurity, data privacy, and multi-cloud transformation initiatives for U.S. banks, aligning security architecture, privacy controls, cloud operating models, and third-party oversight to regulatory expectations and operational-resilience priorities.
CLIENTS
