Abbasi Abbas Poonawala

About Abbasi Abbas Poonawala

Abbasi Poonawala is an ICMG award-winning Enterprise Architect with three decades of global experience leading large-scale technology transformation across retail, corporate, institutional, and investment banking domains. He currently serves as Executive Director – Enterprise Architecture at Alinma Bank, operating at the intersection of business strategy, architecture governance, and emerging technology adoption.Throughout his career, he has led modernization initiatives across core banking (T24), payments ecosystems, AML and financial crime platforms, loan origination, digital channels, trade finance, treasury systems, and enterprise integration landscapes. His work consistently translates business strategy into resilient application and integration architecture aligned to regulatory and operational realities.In recent years, his focus has centered on AI, cloud strategy, and unified data platforms. At Alinma, he has been involved in evaluating cross-vendor AI platforms for business-critical use cases, including Arabic RAG implementations, Text-to-SQL architectures, and fine-tuning workflows. He has assessed platforms such as Gathr.ai, DataRobot, IBM Watson (AlinmaGPT initiative), and Google Cloud as part of a broader AI infrastructure and sovereign cloud roadmap.He contributed to the evaluation of Google Cloud within the bank’s cloud strategy and governance framework, including AI workload placement decisions. Early AI workload evaluations include wealth management use cases aligned to controlled experimentation and enterprise architecture guardrails.Abbasi brings a blend of hands-on architectural depth and executive stakeholder alignment. His experience spans monolith-to-microservices transformation, SaaS and cloud-native modernization, DevSecOps enterprise patterns, and integration architecture across ATM, POS, switches, and gateway ecosystems.Certified in Zachman Enterprise Architecture (ICMG), IBM Java/OOAD, UiPath Automation Architecture, and multiple AI-related domains, he remains focused on how AI, cloud, and data convergence will redefine banking operating models within regulated and sovereign environments.

Experience

1. Executive Director Enterprise Architecture

   Alinma Bank | مصرف الإنماء

   Mar 2022 — Present · Riyadh, SA

   Led Enterprise Architecture activities at Alinma Bank, driving innovation and technology initiatives, digital transformation to support the organization\'s vision and mission under directions of CIO.• Managed a portfolio of 400+ applicatio ns across various banking lines of business, AI factory, implementing enterprise architecture governance and leading change architecture board for strategic projects with focus on application & integration domain• Spearheaded a large-scale cloud migration project, presenting the DevSecOps enterprise architecture vision to the CIO alongwith Roadmap, Execution Plan and mentoring domain architects to align on set ahievable goals.Key Responsibilitiesleading Alinma group (Bank, Capital/Investment, Fintech, Ersal) Enterprise Architecture activities1. Developing and managing Alinma Target Architecture, Architecture Roadmaps, Architecture patterns/guidelines2. Applying Architecture governance on implementation project3. Driving Architecture Innovation and Technology Initiatives4. Supporting RFP process and proposal evaluation 1. DevOps Roadmap 2. Test Automation 3. EA Capability/EA Office 4. Cloud Strategy 5. Transformation office 6. EPMO Capability/EPMO office5. Managing Application Portfolio of 400+ applications.6. Leading Change Architecture Board for large scale strategic projects7. Driving Large scale cloud migration of applications8. Presenting the DevSecOps Enterprise architecture vision, initatives, concerns to Alinma CIO9. Mentoring domain architectsCore expertise: Retail & Corporate Banking Domain specific to Saudi Arabia, Global Private, Investment Banking * Core Banking * Cash Management, Payments and Clearing * Trade Finance * AML, KYC, Risk, compliance & Financial Crime * Treasury * Regulatory compliance * Cards, Digital payments & Omni ChannelsRemote since May 2025

Education

• Skill Arbitrage

  Consulting, Startup in Business & IT Consulting AI for productivity

• upGrad.com

  Certified upGrad Enterprise AI, AI Generalist productivity tools skills

• HelloPM

  Associate, AI Product Management

• ICFAI Business School, Pune Official

  Certificate Program in Business Technology & Innovation with AI, Artificial Intelligence

• Outskill

  Cerified AI Engineer, Certified AI Generalist Accelerator Program, Enterprise AI Architecture

• National Institute of Information Technology

  HDSM,PGDSM, Systems Management

  1995 — 1998

• Welingkar Institute of Management

  MBA (Systems Management / IT ebusiness), Business Administration and Management, General

  2014 — 2016

• Institute of Directors (IOD), India

  Certified Independent Director

• The Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda

  Bachelor of Business Administration - BCOM, Finance

  1995 — 1998

• Vidhyakunj High School Baroda

  SSC, HSC, X Science XII Commerce

  1983 — 1995

• ICFAI Business School

  Global CIO Certification Program, vCIO, IT Strategy, BIAN