Front Office Associate Director

Mohamed (Zaf) Zabar

***-** **** ****** *, West Palm Beach FL 33411 M: 917-***-**** ********@*****.***

Associate Director-IT Finance, Procurement and Financial Planning

15+ years of progressively responsible financial management experience and consistent achievements in Controllership, financial planning and analysis, procurement and risk management roles for Royal Bank of Canada, Capital Markets.

PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE

ROYAL BANK OF CANADA CAPITAL MARKETS, New York 11/2003 to 11/2016

World’s tenth largest investment bank with more than 2,000 employees in the United States.

Associate Director-IT Finance, Procurement and Financial Planning

Oversee financial operations including AP/AR, accruals, month end close, fixed asset accounting and processed re-class financial entries.

Reviewed and approved entries to the General Ledger ensuring all supporting documentation and approvals are maintained for internal and external audit purposes.

Revised existing policies addressing the company's accounting procedures and internal controls.

Managed the creation of the annual budget of over $100M for 18 IT Infrastructure Cost centers, forecasts, and variance reporting.

Prepared monthly management reporting summary providing supporting reports, commentary and key financial metrics. Reviewed with Management and Business Units.

Build and updated financial allocation models to allocate and chargeback all IT related costs to front office business, and inter-department cross allocations under the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) process.

Ensured the General Ledger and associate sub-ledgers were in balance at all times.

Assisted in the opening of new general transits, General Ledger accounts and roll up for financial and regulatory reporting.

Streamlined and simplify existing cost center structure in order to drive accountability and ownership of expenses.

Expense management, monthly expense management reporting and cost savings.

Created and analyzed monthly financial statements in accordance with US GAAP.

Managed outsourced functions, including all audit and regulatory relationships.

Achieved costs savings of over $750K thought automation and process improvements.

Responsible for the development and tracking of financial targets and costs savings opportunities.

Prepared and sought approval for new hire request, headcount forecast and managing open headcounts for both Full time employees and consulting positions.

Managed, reviewed, approved and processed all IT Purchase orders using SAP, paid associated invoices for IT Hardware, application software, market data, travel expenses, consulting costs - reviewed and negotiated all IT Legal vendor contracts to include SOW and RFP.

Developed and maintained a consolidated contract and PO database.

Provided responsive customer service and resolved problems associated with procurement in a timely manner.

Provided overall leadership to a team of 6 ensuring they understood they were trained, understood their roles, responsibilities, policies and procedures, accuracy of data and time management

Projects: Managed project finance cycle including financial reporting on multiple projects. Advise and oversee projects relating to RBC globalization initiative, Dodd-Frank regulations, and automation of mobility operations.

Managed the Capital Budgets for both IT Infrastructure and the Front Office Business ensuring that all relevant documentation relating to the projects are completed and that the appropriate Executive levels of approvals are sought and received. Effectively managed the project budgets ensuring that all hardware, software, consulting and other project costs are tracked and reported via an IT Finance portal. Reviewed of all Capital projects to ensure compliance with GAAP and the firm's capitalization process.

ROYAL BANK OF CANADA CAPITAL MARKETS, New York 01/ 2000 to 11/2003

Vice President / Project Management - Information Technology

Supported the CIO with the implementation of project management practices, systems implementation, financial reporting and US IT budget planning and forecasting.

Managed overall Project Management Life Cycle, mentoring team of 12 PMs and 3 Support staff.

Conferred with management, production, finance and marketing staff determining engineering feasibility, cost effectiveness and customer and management demand for new and existing systems.

Procured hardware/software and managed all IT related expenses and payment.

Liaised with each of the project leads to monitor and manage progress; review, combine and summarize project updates into a weekly program update for Senior Management. Manage data, and produce metrics and reports required to track program progress, produce Senior Management scorecards, and support ad-hoc analyses.

Developed business cases / models for proposed projects and change initiatives, including estimating direct / indirect benefits and costs and realization of benefits.

Oversee models for collecting project/program/service data on which business driven and IT driven portfolio decisions are based.

Direct the distribution of portfolio reports to senior leadership, client stakeholders and management forums, ensuring high levels of data quality and integrity.

Implemented a new General Ledger System to consolidate balance sheet, Profit and loss and regulatory reporting.

Implemented a new expense system to pay, manage and report on expenses.

Won the acclaimed & coveted RBC Convention Award for superior Financial Planning and Analysis

EDUCATION

University of London, England

General Certificate of Education (equivalent BS, Finance & Administration)

PROFESSIONAL SKILLSET

Applications/Internet Technologies:

SAP Accounts Payable, SAP Procurement, RIBS, RIMMS, MDSL (TEM), Service Now, Apptio, CMAP, PeopleSoft General Ledger, Bloomberg Trading Systems, MS Word, MS Excel, MS PowerPoint, Ariba, Concur, Crystal Reports

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