Avtar Sehmbi
As seen in:
Forbes,
Markets Insider,
Fast Company,
Gulf News,
International Business Times (U.K.),
londonstockexchange.com,
Forbes Japan,
Entrepreneur IN
Covers:
AI governance and regulation · operational resilience · global capability centres · financial services transformation · M&A and divestitures · risk and regulatory remediation
Interview
Have you ever used a typewriter?
Yes, in the family business in the early days. When I wanted to make an impression, a letter to win a custom account with a big brand went out on the typewriter, presentation mattered even then. Through the 1990s I built our stores and wholesale operation into a business trading across Asia, Europe and North America, and the paperwork graduated from the typewriter to the green screen along the way. I then came up through WorldCom network operations, which taught me that the technology changes constantly and the discipline of running it well never does. From a typewriter on Green Street to governing AI adoption across 30 markets, that is the whole career in one sentence.
How do you prefer to be pitched on stories?
Email, always, with the topic and outlet in the subject line. Tell me the angle, the deadline and what you need from me, a quote, background, or a view on the record, and I will tell you quickly whether I am the right source. I am most useful on AI governance and regulation, operational resilience, operating models, Global Capability Centres, and mergers, acquisitions and divestitures in financial services. What I will not do is comment on individual companies I have worked for beyond the public record, so save us both the email if that is the story.
What's your favorite social network?
LinkedIn, and it is not close. It is where the conversations I care about actually happen, operating models, AI governance, regulation, and where I publish and engage. I keep no presence anywhere else, one platform done properly beats five done badly, which is roughly my view on most things in operations too.
Who do you wish followed you?
Less who than what: the people wrestling with the problems I write about. Board directors deciding how fast to adopt AI without losing the regulator's confidence, CEOs staring at an operating model that no longer fits the strategy, and the next generation of operators, the people running technology and operations in hard markets who rarely get the attention the strategists do. If my writing is useful to them, it is doing its job.
What story are you most proud of writing or working on?
The sovereign AI corridor piece for Forbes, on how Gulf capital, Indian engineering depth and African fintech demand are forming a new axis of innovation. I am proud of it because it was written from the ground, I have built operations across all three regions, secured licences in those markets and run the Global Capability Centres the article describes, so it is analysis with mud on its boots. The follow-up conversations it started, with people building exactly those corridors, have been the best measure of it landing.
When's the best time to pitch you?
Early morning UK time, and please lead with the deadline. If a request lands in my inbox by 8am London I can usually turn a considered comment around the same day, and faster when the topic sits in my lane: AI governance and regulation, operational resilience, operating models, Global Capability Centres, and mergers, acquisitions and divestitures in financial services. If the deadline is tight, say so, tight deadlines get read first.
When you're not at a computer, where are you most likely to be?
Watching football, or travelling. A career across more than 60 markets leaves you with favourite corners of most continents, though London is always home.
Aside from your own, what's your favorite publication to read?
The Financial Times for the day-to-day, especially Lex, which does more analysis in three paragraphs than most reports manage in thirty pages. The Economist for the long arc, and Harvard Business Review when I want to test how I run things against how others think they should be run. Between them they cover what I care about: markets, regulation and the discipline of operating well.
What's the most common misperception about your beat?
That operations and technology are back-office subjects. In a platform economy every business is a technology business, and the operating model is the product. You cannot enter a market without the technology and operations to serve it. You cannot innovate at scale without the platforms, data and controls to carry it. And you cannot achieve regulatory compliance without the operational discipline that evidences it. In a Fortune 15 insurer serving more than 185 million customer relationships, or a global bank under regulatory consent orders, whether AI adoption, a merger integration or a market entry succeeds is decided by operations, technology and risk leadership. That is the layer I write about and the layer I run.
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