Insights on Risk, Innovation & Leadership
Explore thought leadership articles by Laksh Vaswani — blending regulatory rigor with real-world transformation lessons across global finance.
INDUSTRY EXPERTISE
The Risk Chronicles
A 7-part executive series unpacking risk leadership in today’s regulated world — featuring behavioral risk, cyber risk, third-party risk, and more.
Small Wins Add Up
# The Project I Almost Killed, And What Five Years of Hindsight Taught Me About Momentum I still remember sitting across from my programme manager in month three, watching her make a genuinely reasonable case for why we should stop. She was...
Bright and Early: Leadership Insights from London
What 5:51am Taught Me That No Meeting Ever Could At 5:51am in London, the sky is genuinely undecided, not dark, not light, something in between that has not yet chosen a direction. I find that oddly reassuring. The city has not started...
Night Owl Leadership: Why Not Everyone Peaks at 9am
I recall the moment it arrived at 11:47pm, the timestamp was right there in the commit log, precise and unapologetic. A complete architectural solution to a problem we had been circling in morning standups for three weeks. No preamble, no draft, no...
Small Steps, Big Progress: A Personal Leadership Story
The Particular Silence of a Programme That Has Learned to Perform Momentum I recall a specific kind of organisational stillness that does not announce itself, no alarm, no escalation call, no red flag on the RAG status. Just the quiet hum of...
Deep Focus as a Leadership Discipline
The Hedge Is the Trap I was running four workstreams across two geographies in late 2022. Each one had a legitimate case. I could have defended any of them in front of a board. There was a regulatory thread in one, a...
Momentum Through Small Progress
Momentum Is a Lie You Tell Yourself in Retrospect I was rebuilding in 2021, not the kind of rebuilding that makes for a clean narrative at a conference: I sat in my home office at 7am with cold coffee and genuinely wondered...
EU vs US: Navigating Regulatory Expectations
When the Regulator Calls First, You Have Already Lost I launched a fintech product in the US and the UK on the same day in 2017. It felt like a milestone. Two major markets, simultaneous entry, the kind of thing I put...
Quantitative Tightening and the Macroeconomic Reality
When the System Tightens: What Quantitative Tightening Actually Does to Your Risk Models I was sitting across a conference table from the risk team at a mid-sized asset manager in late 2022. Good people, experienced people, the kind of shop that had...
What Basel III Is Really Testing in Banks Today
When Passing Every Test Is Not the Same as Being Prepared I sat across from a risk committee in Q3 2022 that had done everything right on paper. Liquidity coverage ratio was above threshold, net stable funding ratio was solid, and capital...
Asia changed my perspective
What Six Months in Asia Taught Me About the Limits of My Own Experience I stepped off a plane in Hong Kong in early 2025, carrying twenty years of assumptions about how regulated industries work, how risk is managed, how governance frameworks...
Managing Energy, Not Just Time: A Leadership Reality
You Are Not The Same Person You Were Eight Hours Ago I once missed a critical concession during a high-stakes regulatory negotiation at 4:15pm. A concession I would have caught in seconds at 9am. Not because the issue was buried in the...
AI won’t replace wisdom
I first met her when she called market turns that saved the bank millions. She could read a balance sheet the way most people read a menu, instinctively, with taste, the numbers arranging themselves into meaning before anyone else in the room...
Articles
When Partners Become Liabilities, Rethinking Third-Party Risk
When Partners Become Liabilities - Rethinking Third-Party Risk The Day a Payroll Vendor Brought Us to a Halt It was a routine Friday morning - until it wasn’t.Phones lit up. Systems slowed down. HR couldn’t run payroll....
U.S. vs Europe: Navigating Regulatory Expectations Across Borders
single post U.S. vs Europe: Navigating Regulatory Expectations Across Borders The global financial ecosystem is increasingly interconnected, but the regulatory frameworks that govern it often aren’t. When firms operate across both U.S. and European markets, the challenge...
The Silent Saboteur: Navigating Reputational Risk in Financial Services
The Silent Saboteur: Navigating Reputational Risk in Financial Services There are breaches that hit the front page, and then there are whispers that spread like wildfire. In the world of financial services, reputational risk is the kind...