Rajiv Agarwal
Managing Director

Rajiv Agarwal has over 20 years experience working in different Asian and European countries. He started his own firm Arête Financial Partners focused on Strategic Consulting, Business Transformation Services, Transaction Services, Investment Banking Services and business support services.

Arête Financial Partners advising largest private sector bank in Egypt on retail banking strategy with a objective to growing the share of retail in bank’s portfolio from a ten percent to more than fifty percent in five years. Current engagement involves developing retail bank strategy, Branch transformation from processing centers to sales centers, developing retail risk capabilities, Call Center Design, Retail HR practices and Retail operations & technology infrastructure.

Arête Financial Partners are also managing projects on buy side for an Indian IT company looking to take a strategic stake in IT services companies in South East Asia. It is currently working with a mid size Indonesian bank to look for a strategic partner.
Prior to this, Rajiv was Consumer Banking Head for Europe for ABN Amro Bank NV based in Amsterdam, The Netherlands where he was responsible to expand consumer banking franchise in Europe.

Prior to this he was CFO & COO for Private banking, Commercial and Consumer banking for Asia Pacific for ABN Amro based in Hong Kong and Taiwan. Prior to joining ABN Amro, Rajiv worked for Citibank for 13 years in different functional areas: Client service, Financial Control, Sales & Marketing, Operations & Technology in different countries: Singapore, Philippines, Japan and India.

He has worked on large scale transformation of businesses and turnarounds. He has successfully launched new businesses, new products and new processes. He was responsible for introducing Performance management process for Operations and Technology area in his previous bank.

Rajiv has done Advanced Management Program from Wharton School of Management, University of Pennsylvania. He has done his MBA from Indian Institute of Management (IIM), Ahemdabad, India. He holds a Mechanical Engineering degree from Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Delhi, India.