Lee Ashmore

Leading AI initiatives for Group Functions technology, covering Risk & Compliance, Finance, HR, Corporate Governance & Comms, Legal, Audit and Corporate Real Estate.

• Leading Group Functions technology across Asia and the Middle East as well as Head of the China tech centre for Group Functions technology (c. 1000 people). • Working with senior stakeholders to deliver Gen AI transformation across Group Functions globally • Building a culture of innovation and engineering excellence.

• Spearheading the development and implementation of a group-wide Gen AI platform strategy, driving innovation and scaling AI/ML capabilities across Risk and Compliance. • Leading a large engineering organization in the design, development, and management of central AI platforms, delivering critical data science capabilities to GB/GF development teams. • Driving the innovation pipeline for Risk and Compliance, overseeing the full lifecycle of PoCs, pilots, and scaled production deployments of Gen AI solutions. • Establishing firmwide development and architectural patterns for achieving key Data Science outcomes, including RAG chains and Knowledge Management Controls. • Developing and managing shared platforms for DevOps pipelines, observability, and event management, enhancing engineering efficiency and operational excellence. • Overseeing the development of the Risk & Compliance “Application Build Framework (ABF),” a strategic initiative to accelerate application development and ensure adherence to the highest architectural and engineering standards.

• Led a global technology organization of 900 professionals, providing strategic direction and overseeing the delivery of critical systems for CDD/KYC, regulatory compliance, and analytics. • Oversaw a technology budget of circa USD$100m. • Successfully transformed the CDD application, restoring its License to Operate by implementing a focus on service resilience, enhancing system stability (71% incident reduction), and improving performance (30% improvement). • Championed digital transformation by driving DevOps and Agile adoption across technology teams, achieving top-tier DORA metrics and significantly increasing sprint capacity (50% increase). • Drove cloud and data transformation initiatives, including the successful implementation of a new cloud-native transaction monitoring system and the re-engineering of the global Compliance Data Lake onto AliCloud. • Established a new data analytics platform in Google Cloud for Regulatory Compliance, enhancing the organization's analytical capabilities. • Led the development of a Gen AI platform on Google Cloud, providing central capabilities for Risk and Compliance PoCs and enabling the deployment of AI models from multiple cloud service providers.

• Held a dual leadership role, providing strategic direction and overseeing the delivery of HSBC's global Anti-Money Laundering (AML) technology strategy while maintaining regional leadership for Compliance IT in Asia Pacific. • Led a global team of approximately 280 technology professionals, driving the development and implementation of advanced AML systems and controls. • Played a key role in HSBC successfully exiting its skilled person commitment by representing HSBC technology with regulators, legal counsel, and the skilled person team. • Drove a cultural shift towards DevOps and Agile practices within AML technology, resulting in significant improvements in development velocity (over 200% increase), incident reduction (over 50%), and reduced toil (over 25%). • Established regional business engagement teams to enhance collaboration, transparency, and ownership around work prioritization and funding. • Cultivated a culture of continuous learning and innovation, with a significant portion of the team obtaining external certifications in cutting-edge technologies. • Spearheaded the strategic move of HSBC's AML systems towards a cloud-based architecture, overseeing the deployment of the first in-house built, cloud-based transaction monitoring system on Google Cloud. • Oversaw the implementation of AI/ML-driven transaction monitoring systems, earning industry recognition through prestigious awards (Celent Model Risk Manager award, The Asian Banker award). • Implemented a cloud-based TM post-detection layer AI/ML solution, achieving a 55% reduction in cases sent to Operations and generating substantial cost savings (over $3.9m annually).

• Led the technology delivery of the Global Standards transformation program in Asia Pacific, the largest and most complex transformation program ever undertaken at HSBC. • Oversaw the transition from federated systems to single group instances for critical compliance systems, ensuring alignment with regulatory requirements and enabling HSBC to meet its Deferred Prosecution Agreement (DPA) commitments. • Led the technology implementation of a KPMG Client Onboarding tool using Amazon Web Services, a pioneering project that marked the first movement of customer data to the public cloud in production at HSBC. • Represented HSBC IT in Asia Pacific in interactions with the Monitor team, providing crucial support for compliance technology testing and contributing to HSBC's successful exit from DPA commitments. • Cultivated strong relationships with COOs across the Asia Pacific region and globally, ensuring the delivery of globally consistent solutions that effectively meet regional business needs.

• Led the support and enhancement of Group Wholesale credit risk systems and systems for risk modeling, stress testing, and analytics in Asia Pacific. • Led the Global Standards - Customer Due Diligence program for IT in the region. • Spearheaded the successful implementation of the Credit and Risk Management (CARM) for Corporates 4.0 ASP Rollout, a project recognized with the “Effective Collaboration Award” for Asia Pacific IT. • Drove the global alignment of systems solutions, consolidating 22 separate instances into a single global instance of the CARM system.

• Held a global role with responsibility for Release Management and technical integration of the Finance Transformation Platform (FTP), a large-scale financial reporting platform. • (Spent the initial 6 months on a Short-Term Assignment in Pune, India)

• Led a large development team in India, focused on improving the engagement model between onshore and offshore teams within the retail core banking mainframe development area.

• Seconded to a new global technology center in Brazil to establish and lead a new engineering team, developing components of Global Premier and a local real-time decisioning engine for internet banking. • Played a key role in the center's rapid growth, from under 50 to over 800 employees, gaining valuable experience in building and scaling high-performing teams.

Working on global projects using COBOL, CICS and DB2 within Customer Data Management and Customer Relationship Management.

PowerBuilder Developer for HSBC Investment Bank in the UK.

Support of CISCO, Unix, Novell and Windows NT Server networks and applications (including Workflow & Imaging systems) within HSBC Asset Management.

Unit trust dealer then Team Leader in the business operations area of HSBC Asset Management specialising in structured products.