I first heard about ACCA as a teenager, when my older brother met an ACCA member and told me about the qualification. He didn't pursue it, but the idea stayed with me. I passed CAT, then moved on to ACCA, earning a BSc in Applied Accounting from Oxford Brookes University along the way. My first job was in Lahore, moving a manufacturer's handwritten ledgers into accounting software. In 2015 I moved to Dubai and, at APCO Worldwide, rose from AP accountant to AP and Treasury Manager for MENA and India. Qualifying took around ten years, finishing in 2020 as the UAE prize winner in Advanced Performance Management, and I would not change that. By then I had ten years of experience, and the work had taught me what no exam can: how to deal with people. I became FCCA in 2025.

I am the founder of AI for Finance Circle, where I work with finance professionals and teams on using Claude AI without losing the rigour our profession depends on. I am also a practising CFO, having co-founded CompassPoint Consulting in the UK in 2025. There, AI now handles much of our mechanical work, while my team supervises it, verifies it and owns the judgement. I started AIFC to share what I had learned beyond one firm. The most rewarding part is watching experienced accountants realise that the judgement they spent years building matters more now, not less.

"There are two connected challenges facing finance professionals right now. First, AI will not replace finance professionals soon, but people who work well with it will replace those who do not. Second, as AI absorbs the mechanical work, judgement becomes our most valuable skill. My generation built that judgement by doing the work by hand, presenting wrong numbers in meetings and being corrected. Juniors now have AI from day one, so that training ground is disappearing. ACCA has already changed a great deal since I qualified, and senior leaders share the responsibility to pass judgement on to the next generation deliberately."

My clients span sectors, regions and stages of growth, so their challenges differ. One question now runs through almost all of them: how far should we adopt AI, and what is the right investment, in money and in effort? The deeper issue is commercial, not technical. AI is eroding the moats service businesses relied on, forcing each to rethink how it creates value for customers. There is real opportunity too. Productivity is not only about cutting headcount; it is about doing more with the same team. I support clients by treating AI adoption as a business decision, tested like any other investment.

When it comes to outside of work, family comes first. Time with my wife and our young daughter is how I properly switch off. I love travelling, and moving from the UAE to the UK has given us a whole new country to explore. I listen to a lot of music and still enjoy an evening on the Xbox. I also read about business and law out of pure curiosity.

One piece of advice I'd share with other finance professionals is learn to work with AI, but never hand it your judgement. AI can now do much of the mechanical work that used to fill our days, and professionals who learn to direct it will move ahead of those who don't. But an accountant's value was never the spreadsheet. It is being trusted to put your name to the numbers. Treat AI output like a junior's draft: check it, question it, and only sign what you understand. AI gives you speed. Judgement & accountability is what clients pay you for.