26+ years in IT leadership — insurance & financial services IT, global delivery, AI transformation

M. Arif Khan

CIO  ·  Fractional CIO  ·  Senior Solutions Consultant  ·  IT Operations  ·  IT Infrastructure Management

I lead enterprise IT for insurance carriers and MGAs — building the infrastructure, offshore delivery, and governance those businesses run on. Over 26 years I've architected cloud-native platforms, built a captive offshore center and commercialized it into a 600+ staff BPO/ODC serving outside carriers, and stood up AI-driven automation and disaster recovery programs that hold up under board and regulator scrutiny.

COVERAGE MAP4 DOMAINS · MULTI-REGION
M. ARIF KHAN CIO — INSURANCE & GLOBAL IT INSURANCE & MGA 22 entities · $1.59M rationalized GLOBAL BPO / ODC Captive → commercial, 600+ staff INSURTECH $4.5M revenue launched RETAIL & SUPPLY CHAIN Enterprise DR, 300+ personnel

I build the structure that wasn't there before.

My path into IT leadership didn't start with a crisis playbook — it started with gaps. At Arch Insurance, I was brought in to build out the QA department: there were no test case templates, no reporting structure, and no way to know how many tests had been executed, passed, failed, or were blocked. I built that foundation from the ground up.

That work led to being moved into Arch's IT Infrastructure organization, which had lost control of its own environment — no visibility into which servers lived in which data center, what applications ran on them, or even how many mobile devices were issued (some users had two). I rebuilt the asset tracking, governance, and cost controls that gave leadership real visibility for the first time.

That turnaround is what led Synchrono to bring me on as CIO — they'd seen the results at Arch and wanted the same rebuild applied to a from-scratch, cloud-native platform. The same pattern has repeated since: an SVP seat at BNY Mellon, and now as an independent consultant — walk into an environment with gaps, build the structure and governance it's missing, and hand back something a board can trust.

Stabilize

Root-cause outages, close single points of failure, and get incident response back under real command and control.

Modernize

Rationalize legacy platforms, move workloads to resilient cloud architecture, and layer AI-driven automation on top — without cutting capability.

Scale

Build captive offshore centers and commercialize them into revenue-generating BPO/ODC operations at scale — 600+ staff across global delivery centers — without losing governance or quality.

Govern

Stand up BC/DR programs, risk reporting, and audit-ready controls that hold up under SOX and regulator scrutiny.

Track record

// selected outcomes across four industries
$1.59M+
in IT cost rationalization delivered in a single portfolio audit
430 TB
of critical carrier data protected across 5 hybrid data centers
22
global entities brought under one BC/DR program
600+
offshore ODC/BPO staff led in the Philippines and Cyprus, plus 34 onshore in the USA
$1.9M
in profit generated by the Global BPO/ODC in 2017, its second year of operation
$15M
in annual revenue from commercializing the captive BPO/ODC within two years
50%
of manual support volume automated through AI-driven resolution pathways
$4.5M
in new revenue enabled by a greenfield cloud platform I architected
0
security breaches or privacy incidents across every environment I've run
300
cross-functional staff coordinated in a zero-impact enterprise DR exercise
100%
growth in offshore engineering capacity delivered under strict governance

Leadership timeline

// roles, in sequence
MAR 2025 — PRESENTLIVE
Senior Technical Consultant — BC/DR, Risk & Resiliency
Independent Consulting (Remote)
  • Ran resiliency and DR programs for a $1T+ asset manager and a national off-price retailer, closing regulatory gaps in core operations.
  • Led a 300-person enterprise DR exercise end to end with zero impact to live operations.
  • Re-architected failover across cloud and on-prem estates using AWS multi-region, multi-AZ design.
  • Digitized BIAs and recovery roadmaps in ServiceNow and Archer; aligned the program to ISO 22301.
SEP 2023 — NOV 2024COMPLETE
Senior Vice President, IT Infrastructure & Operations
Bank of New York Mellon Corp. (BNY)
  • Built a 22-person global delivery organization for Global Fund Accounting spanning onshore, nearshore, and offshore.
  • Cut data discrepancies 50% and doubled Enterprise Data Lake capacity while improving upstream data quality 50%.
  • Accelerated product delivery 30% and cut ticket resolution time 25% by restructuring L1–L3 support flows.
  • Automated 50% of manual support calls with AI-driven resolution pathways, cutting incident times from days to hours.
  • Held zero audit deficiencies across SOX and regulatory reviews while managing budget within 5% of target.
DEC 2019 — MAY 2023COMPLETE
Chief Information Officer
Synchrono Group Inc.
  • Architected a 100% cloud-native tech stack from scratch for an insurtech MGA startup, generating $4.5M in revenue within three years.
  • Scaled an offshore engineering & QA org 100% while holding governance and quality standards.
  • Cut time-to-market 100% with Agile delivery, enabling 30-day releases and 10% monthly revenue growth.
  • Delivered SSO for a 12,000-agent broker network in 30 days; built full BCP/DR framework with zero downtime during disruptions and zero security incidents.
JUL 2006 — DEC 2019COMPLETE
Vice President, Global IT Operations, Infrastructure, Development & QA
Arch Insurance Group / Arch Capital Services (Nasdaq: ACGL)
  • Ran a $20M global operating model across 3 delivery centers (US, Asia, EU) — 600 offshore plus 34 onshore staff.
  • Rationalized platforms and vendors across 19 offices for $1.59M+ in savings — cloud migration, telecom consolidation, an in-house ticketing tool, and asset/telecom audits.
  • Led the Program Management of a legacy Policy Administration overhaul into modern Java architecture.
  • Built a BC/DR program across 22 global entities, protecting 430TB of carrier data across 5 hybrid data centers.
JUN 2000 — JUN 2006COMPLETE
Consultant — QA/QC Test Manager
State Farm Insurance
  • Owned QA and delivery for consumer-facing insurance portals and online rate quotation systems (Auto, Life, Fire).
  • Built a custom XML capture tool that replaced manual testing, saving $500K over five years.
  • Promoted from Test Engineer to Test Manager, eventually leading a 6-person QA team.

Ways to work together

// ways to bring me in
Engagement — Strategic

CIO / CTO / Fractional CIO

Ongoing, part-time executive technology leadership for organizations that need the judgment without the full-time seat.

  • Board and executive-level technology strategy
  • Budget, vendor, and delivery governance
  • Global org design and offshore/onshore scaling
  • Technology due diligence for M&A
Engagement — Technical

Senior Solutions Consultant

Hands-on architecture and resiliency work for a defined project or program, from assessment to deployed solution.

  • Architecture reviews and gap analyses
  • Cloud migration & modernization (AWS/Azure)
  • BC/DR program design, RTO/RPO, tabletop testing
  • Risk governance via ServiceNow, Archer, ISO 22301
Engagement — Crisis

Turnaround & Stabilization

Short-cycle, high-intensity engagements following a leadership transition, outage, or failed audit.

  • Root-cause elimination of recurring outages
  • SOX and regulatory audit readiness
  • Rapid cost rationalization across vendors and platforms
  • Interim command & control during live incidents
Engagement — Transformation

Global Delivery & AI Leadership

Build captive offshore centers and commercialize them into revenue-generating BPO/ODC operations, then layer AI-driven automation on top to compress cost and cycle time.

  • Captive-to-commercial ODC/BPO buildout and governance
  • AI-driven support automation & decision-tree resolution
  • Global delivery center performance management
  • Change management across onshore/offshore teams

Credentials

// certifications & education
MBCI — Member, Business Continuity Institute
CBCI — Certificate, Business Continuity Institute
ITIL v4 — PeopleCert
PMP — Project Management Institute
CSQA — Quality Assurance Institute
AINS — The Institutes Knowledge Group

Master's Degree in Computer Applications · Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science

Initiate engagement

If your environment is unstable, under-governed, or waiting for the next audit finding — let's talk about what a fractional CIO or a focused consulting engagement could fix in the next 90 days.

Email me directly →
arif2@outlook.com New York City Metro Area & New Jersey