Viji Varghese

Viji is a techno-ops professional with over 21 years’ experience. He runs an operation that is a blend of human and digital workforce. He leads a team in the areas of Automation, Business Transformation and Operations. He therefore manages a highly digital operations team in the critical area of Payments, Cash & Clearing.

His key strengths include executing Mashreq’s strategies and implementing change across all level and leading large multicultural teams.

Viji has been instrumental in embedding Robotic Process Automation (RPA), AI, ML and NLP successfully across Mashreq’s functional groups and countries. His team has developed cutting edge NLP & ML based systems in Remittances, Cheque Clearing, Payment investigations and Charge collection. His idea was the semi-finalist at Gartner’s 2018 and won the Gartner’s Eye for Innovation – 2019 held at Barcelona.

Prior to Mashreq, he built a digital workforce in ANZ where he was the Head of COE for Robotics by leveraging tools such as Open Span and Automation Anywhere. In his four years’ experience of doing this, he has deployed 2300 robots in streams like Lending, Retail Banking, and Payments and Mortgages, across 369 processes and seventeen countries.

Before moving to ANZ, Viji spent 14 years at HSBC as the Head of Payment Operations and RPA, leading a 1900-member Payment Operations team, servicing 32 countries. He worked in diverse segments within the Bank like Training, Projects, Strategy, Operations Automation and Commercialisation.

Viji is extremely passionate about education and poverty alleviation; he managed a school for underprivileged children for a year during his stint at HSBC and supports organisations, which works for children of leprosy patients.