Banking
Madhu Kalyan Kalam
Citibank India & Singapore
Singapore,Singapore
1
Certification
27
Years of experience
Dynamic executive leader with over 24 years of global experience in Program and Quality Assurance, managing a portfolio exceeding $105M with full P&L accountability. Proven track record of enhancing operational efficiency, driving revenue growth, and achieving high client satisfaction across diverse geographies. Expertise in aligning transformation initiatives with corporate strategy while leveraging cutting-edge technologies such as API, AI, and automation to position organizations for sustainable growth. Recognized as a trusted advisor and people-first leader, fostering talent development and championing diversity initiatives, resulting in exceptional team performance and retention rates near 0% year-over-year.
Work History
Vice President
6 Years 2 Months- Advanced through pivotal roles including Quality Assurance lead for Data conversions of Digital platforms and improved delivery efficiency by 60%.
- Strategy to maintain central digital libraries for all the releases and provide oversight to audits. Identification of AI /automations to digitalize the business operation flows.
- Accountable for API QA certification.
- Automate QA workflows saving manual QA testing effort by 80% across all regions
- Introduced In-sprint automation plan to ensure that testing scripts are built within the sprint and reduce the team size by 20%
- Built E2E process to validate live flows in Client Testing environment and bridge any gaps by 95% before releasing to clients
- Conduct training constantly to ensure that the team is updated on all the changes and plan for the upcoming deployments
- Ensure that the team has built a robust regression bed with 98% automation to support production deployments at any time
- Using Friday.AI, Workspace Stylus for test design and preparing 85% scripts within the same scrum
- Responsible for delivering the E2E delivery plan for India Data Center migration across all streams – Digital and Non-Digital platforms within 2 months and meet the RBI regulatory requirement.
- Ensure to comply with Country specific standards while transitioning and data transfer and delivered 100% audit compliant projects.
- Conducted performance evaluations, compensations and hiring to maintain appropriate staffing requirements.
- Provided strong leadership to enhance team productivity and morale.
Vice President
7 Years- Provided portfolio-level leadership across EMEA covering delivery outcomes on EMEA regional governance and Quality Assurance.
- Directed EMEA regional digital redesign project across Poland, Russia, UAE, UK, Czech Republic, and Hungary to improve digital penetration and reduce branch footprint by 85% in less than 12 months.
- Unified operational branches across EMEA to support operational streamlining and achieve a 95% reduction.
- Digitized sales automation process, built sales execution workflow, and launched customer products with defined sales strategy delivering 110% increase in sales penetration.
- Centralized and digitalized branch operations under audit standardization program to enable redesigned content management usage of digital platforms for sales target attainment.
- Coordinated resource managers to monitor and oversee regional capacity for 100+ FTE/partners across regional engagements.
- Managed workforce and capacity planning capability building and proactive capacity gap resolution to support alignment between talent supply and business demand.
- Improved organizational oversight and decision-making through executive governance process support. Strengthened pipeline visibility and resource management outcomes through MBR/QBR reviews and war room calls across time zones, while improving scalability by 30% on rollout plans, defect fixes, and capability balance.
- Collaborated to identify D&I plan supporting transforming culture and advancing inclusive hiring, activating inclusion across day-to-day employee experience.
- Managed diverse teams of 100+ professionals, coordinating account onboarding and growth efforts across multiple locations to establish and scale new accounts.
- Directed team competency planning by setting goals, assessing training needs, selecting individuals for development, and monitoring progress.
Business System Analyst
11 Months- Managed end-to-end development and support initiatives across fixed-price and time-and-materials engagements to maintain schedule and budget adherence, improving fulfillment predictability and reducing staffing lead times by 15%–20%.
- Led cardpac-to-vision-plus platform migration with card conversion delivery across Japan and Asia markets, completed within 12 months.
- Prepared status reports, compiled cost estimates, and built resource plans to enable structured project tracking and resource alignment.
- Delivery stayed on track through effort estimates aligned with plan. Issue resolution progress remained monitored through active follow-up. Major risks and issues were escalated to steering committee after risk review and mitigation action planning.
Production Support Manager
6 Years 5 Months- Recorded MIM/incident/service request information; applied categorization and prioritization codes to ensure 95% SLA achievement.
- Performed first-line investigation and diagnostic troubleshooting within agreed SLAs, addressing root causes to reduce production issues by 70%.
- Reviewed unresolved incidents and service requests and escalated to appropriate support teams when resolution exceeded agreed timelines.
- Processed and finalized resolved incident request tickets and other call follow-ups within 24–48 hours.
- Directed delivery operations for all APAC and EMEA markets; owned planning and monitoring of key modules to ensure strict adherence to schedules, specifications, and quality standards.
- Accounted for team of 12 performance through capability building, performance goal setting, and sustained continuous-driving improvement.
- Developed targeted training programs and mentoring initiatives to reinforce skill-building and performance improvement.
- Coordinated requirement gathering through pilot implementation for R&D testing tool product development project to ensure readiness across supported locations.
- Directed production incident triage activities, escalating incidents in timely manner and coordinating stakeholder communication to restore banking services.
- Reviewed batch schedules for processing exceptions, escalated issues, and coordinated resolution efforts with technology and operations teams.
- Planned and executed change and release activities to support production readiness verification and reduce service disruption risk.
- Investigated patterns across recurring incidents, recorded underlying root causes, and outlined preventive control actions to strengthen operational stability.
- Managed and updated service support procedures, ensuring consistent adherence to operational standards and proper escalation protocols.
- Partnered with application infrastructure and business teams to resolve issues impacting production environment stability and performance.
Assistant Operations Manager
10 Months- Facilitated information collection and dispute settlement through structured communication with supervisors, team leaders, people in charge, and other stakeholders, reducing escalations by 70%.
- Reviewed random day-to-day call recordings to identify mistakes or errors and assess call centre performance, improving efficiency by 30%.
- Investigated and resolved complicated customer inquiries, ensuring clear answers for complaints and ongoing customer questions.
- Supported HSBC Data Processing India Pvt Ltd data processing operations to maintain processing continuity.
- Monitored production environments to support operational stability by resolving incidents and restoring service continuity.
- Managed incident triage with application infrastructure and business teams to streamline resolution workflows.
Team Leader
1 Year- Providing basic credit card customer support to ICICI bank customers using Vision Plus with an excellent team of 25
- Handling both inbound, outbound, chat & email services & training the new teams joining the organization
- Operations Contact Centre
Process Associate
1 Year 7 Months- Handled both inbound and outbound calls for different processes serving the US customers
- Had got good exposure to six sigma standards supporting my manager for his Green Belt project. Got trained and organized the quality process in place for Penske CR
- GE Capital International Services is one of the remote customer-servicing departments of GE. I have worked in GE Financial Assurance, marketing GE products and for Penske Central Reservations in the inbound sales department.
Assistant Duty Manager
1 Year 11 Months- Shift Operations: Lead the front desk team, manage shift handovers, and supervise daily activities across the lobby, housekeeping, and maintenance.
- Guest Relations: Address escalated complaints, manage VIP arrivals, and ensure requests like room upgrades or dietary needs are handled flawlessly.
- Incident Management: Coordinate emergency protocols (e.g., medical issues or fire alarms), handle security concerns, and document unusual incidents.
- Financial Oversight: Reconcile shift finances, authorize billing adjustments or rebates, and oversee cash handling security.
- Staff Leadership: Ensure staff adhere to grooming and brand standards, provide on-the-floor training, and coordinate breaks.
- Rooms Division Manager
Education
MBA - Hotel Management & Marketing
Bachelor of Science - Hospitality Management
Skills
JIRA Dashboards
Zephyr
GitHub
Confluence
MS-Office
IntelliJ Idea
Postman
OpenShift
Process improvement
Scheduling and coordination
Staff training and development
Budget administration
Project management
Service delivery management
Customer engagement
New employee hiring
Client account management
Customer service management
Process improvements
Accomplishments
- Audit Standardization Program – Centralized and digitalized branch operations in Citibank Handlowy, Warsaw for innovative SMART branches and redesign content management usage of digital platforms for achieving sales targets by 55%..
- Global Digital Program – Built a centralized Digital program for instant content management updates to enable enterprise-wide scalability, paving the way for AI/ML adoption and predictive analytics and reduce manual effort by 70%.
- Global Delivery Standards Library – Established a unified repository of standardized practices, processes, and compliance requirements, ensuring consistent governance across geographies.
- End-to-End Tools Integration Program – Connected lead-to-delivery workflows across in-house platforms to create a unified resource management process. Defined metrics and closed utilization gaps, improving capacity planning and achieving 85% forecast accuracy.
- API Platform for Digital Product Enablement: Architected and Built a delivery driven approach for Commercial Cards API Platform and scaled from 1000 to 40 million + transactions with precision CQE supporting Functional QA, NFT, VA.
- Led the CQE delivery of the Mobile Virtual Card program, driving a 20% increase in client additions and positioning Citibank as a leader in providing virtual cards for commercial and e commerce clients through end-to-end digital channels
- White Label Mobile App Digital Partnership Implemented White Label Mobile App solution for Consumer Credit Cards which are used by the Client Partners
- Recognized for Optimizing Costs Drove operational efficiency projects in the Digital platform which helps in the reduction of operation efficiency and also reduces the overall processing time from customer point of view
Certification
ITIL Foundation V3, PMP, IIM Kol, IIM Koz – Advanced Data Analytics, Effective Executive Presentations (Dale Carnegie Training), Gain a Competitive Edge: Building Trust, Rapport and Impact (Dale Carnegie Training), Establish Operational Plans for Business Function (WDA), Establish and Evaluate Systems to achieve Organizational Targets (WDA), Communicate Organizational Vision, Mission and Values (WDA), Develop Organizational Strategies and Policies (WDA), Essential Managerial Skills
Thoughtful Leadership & Public Speaking
- Yet to be covered
- Cover Letter
- I am an accomplished professional with over 20 years of experience in the financial services industry successfully delivering complex global projects for clients & senior stake holders on time and within budget. Able to leverage strong communication skills, attention-to-detail, organizational skills and people management skills adding value to any organization that I work for. Proven Success in strengthening enterprises by establishing and implementing life cycle Project Controls, best work practices, policies, procedures, and guidelines. Exhibit natural leadership skills and an entrepreneurial spirit with a special talent for transitioning strategy into action and achievement.
- My experience over the years focusing on Program & Projects Management, Incident & Problem Management, Product Management and Cost reduction initiatives
- Prepared and implemented comprehensive business plans to facilitate achievement by planning cost-effective operations and market development activities.
- Transformed and digitized various client-facing platforms from traditional procedures to deliver success rate and seamless processing.
- Partnered with C-level client executives to plan and execute large scale digital transformation initiatives, taking advantage of state-of-the-art enterprise technology.
- Perform exceptionally within team to roll out the B2B & B2C platform across all regions to provide Virtual Cards & Instant payments using API’s.
- Set up Quality Assurance process for EMEA region and build a support center for Digital platforms including testing, CI-CD approach & production support.
- Member of the core team to generate AI based customer support via phone & chat.
- Lead integration of Digital technology platforms across APAC & EMEA – leading EMEA.
Professional Certifications & Trainings
- ITIL Foundation V3
- PMP
- IIM Kol
- IIM Koz – Advanced Data Analytics
- Effective Executive Presentations (Dale Carnegie Training)
- Gain a Competitive Edge: Building Trust, Rapport and Impact (Dale Carnegie Training)
- Establish Operational Plans for Business Function (WDA)
- Establish and Evaluate Systems to achieve Organizational Targets (WDA)
- Communicate Organizational Vision, Mission and Values (WDA)
- Develop Organizational Strategies and Policies (WDA)
- Essential Managerial Skills
Timeline
Vice President
Citibank India & Singapore
08.2020 - CurrentRead More
Vice President
Citibank Poland & Singapore
08.2013 - 08.2020Read More
Business System Analyst
American Express Singapore
01.2012 - 12.2012Read More
Production Support Manager
Citibank Singapore
08.2005 - 01.2012Read More
Assistant Operations Manager
HSBC India
03.2004 - 01.2005Read More
Team Leader
ICICI Bank India
03.2003 - 03.2004Read More
Process Associate
GE India
08.2001 - 03.2003Read More
Assistant Duty Manager
Hotel Ramada Manohar
09.1999 - 08.2001Read More
Canadian School of Management
MBA from Hotel Management & Marketing
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American Hotel & Motel Association
Bachelor of Science from Hospitality Management
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