Raja Santhalingam, Product Manager in Bengaluru, Karnataka, India
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Raja Santhalingam

Verified Expert  in Product Management

Product Manager

Bengaluru, Karnataka, India

Toptal member since January 20, 2023

Bio

Raja has 15+ years of experience in the corporate banking and lending domains. He held different positions in a wide variety of companies, including as a back-office operation analyst, production support specialist, test analyst, solution specialist, business analyst, product owner, product manager, and implementation specialist. Raja specializes in Loan IQ products.

Expertise

  • Agile
  • End-to-end Implementation (E2E)
  • Lending
  • Loan IQ
  • Product Owner
  • Requirements
  • Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC)
  • Solution Design

Work Experience

Senior Consultant

2021 - PRESENT
Private Consultancy
  • Contributed to new implementation and upgrade of Loan IQ products.
  • Trained the client on the Loan IQ features and functions.
  • Prepared and presented a solution design for the custom feature requested by the clients.

Senior Principal Business Analyst

2019 - 2021
Temenos SA
  • Launched a beta version of a new application for corporate origination in 10 months.
  • Owned the development of the E2E product as a single member of the product team.
  • Signed the first client within a month of launching the beta version.

Lead Business Analyst

2015 - 2019
Finastra
  • Participated in the working committee led by the Bank of England and Alternative Reference Rate Committee and initiated the development of an alternative reference rate feature in Loan IQ.
  • Integrated and positioned E2E customer lending by integrating the origination app with Loan IQ.
  • Received an award from the CEO for the Loan IQ sale while being part of the BSG Team.

Senior Consultant

2013 - 2015
Capgemini
  • Migrated data from legacy platforms to the ACBS platform.
  • Structured agreements in a new platform to enable servicing.
  • Rolled out a new lending platform for six different countries within two months.

Team Manager

2012 - 2013
Barclays India
  • Built a team to manage the migration of wealth management and lending products.
  • Trained new members on the business and platform while serving as part of the training team.
  • Improved the turnaround time in granting safe lending as part of an internal initiative. Received Barclays' high-flyer award.

Lending Team Lead

2007 - 2012
The Royal Bank of Scotland
  • Led four teams of 20 members during the UK and the Netherlands migration of Loan IQ.
  • Joined the Loan IQ Nostro remediation project team within four months of joining the bank.
  • Conducted the Loan IQ migration activities in London and received excellent feedback from the UK management.

Project History

Alternative Reference Rate Enablement in Loan IQ

Led the design and development of the alternative reference rate feature in Loan IQ and delivered well ahead of the market competitors.

As the market need to transition out from LIBOR emerged, I participated in both committees—the Bank of England Committee and the Alternative Reference Rate Committee—to analyze the impact of this requirement. I presented the high-level solution design approach to the existing Loan IQ clients to help them understand the different calculation methodologies and results. I also broke down the release requirements and delivered the feature early ahead of competitors.

Corporate Origination Application

Launched a beta version of a corporate origination application within 10 months and signed the first client in a month.

I contributed to building the corporate origination application from scratch by owning the product development end to end. The application was created on the UI/UX dashboard with distribution service architecture. The sales team needed this app urgently, so we had to deliver it quickly to meet this goal.

Implementation and Upgrade of Loan IQ

Led the project to implement Loan IQ and train the client on features and functions.

As part of the new implementation, I conducted business process management session to share the Loan IQ best practices for handling different lending products, followed by requirement alignment sessions to categorize out-of-the-box items. I suggested workarounds for items identified as GAPs and prepared high-level solutions design of the must-have features identified as GAPs without a workaround. I also held configuration workshops to prepare configuration files for static data used to build the environment.

Education

2005 - 2007

Master of Business Administration (MBA) in Finance

St. Joseph's College of Engineering and Technology - Chennai, India

2001 - 2005

Bachelor of Engineering Degree in Computer Science

Krishnasamy College of Engineering and Technology - Cuddalore, India

Certifications

SEPTEMBER 2021 - SEPTEMBER 2023

Finastra Certified Associate—Functional Loan IQ

Finastra

SEPTEMBER 2021 - SEPTEMBER 2023

Finastra Certified Implementer—Functional Loan IQ

Finastra

Skills

Tools

Jira, Zoom, Confluence

Industry Expertise

Banking & Finance

Paradigms

Agile, Testing

Other

Teams, Requirements, Lending, Workshops, Product Demonstrations, Request for Proposal (RFP), Solution Design, Functional Specifications, Business Cases, Training, Stakeholder Management, End-to-end Implementation (E2E), Loan IQ, Finance, Strategy, Data Analysis, Product Owner, Product Roadmaps, Proof of Concept (POC), Integration, Project Management, Leadership, Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC), Programming, Databases, Implementation, Loan Origination, Commercial Lending, Release Management, Test Scripting, Wealth Management, Compliance, Monitoring, Management, Middle Office, Loan Management, Reconciliation, User Stories, Distribution, User Interface (UI), User Experience (UX), Demos, BPM, Business Analysis, Corporate

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