Dr. Awat Rahimi

Before joining Kroll, Awat served as a Partner and Head of Prudential at Alpha Financial Markets Consulting, where he led Internal Capital Adequacy and Risk Assessment (ICARA) reviews and capital model assessments for some of the largest investment firms in the UK. Prior to that, Awat spent five years at the FCA in the Prudential Specialists Department, where he was responsible for leading multiple ICARA reviews, setting capital requirements for authorised firms and designing the FCA’s benchmarks and assessment tools to determine the level of capital firms are required to hold. He also developed prudential data tools and financial resilience dashboards that shaped the regulator’s supervisory approach and implementation of the Investment Firm Prudential Regime (IFPR).

During his time at the FCA, Awat led the regulator’s strategic response to the COVID-19 pandemic by implementing a data-driven automated assessment of the financial resilience of around 50,000 solo-regulated firms, enabling the FCA to risk-rank and prioritise them for supervision. He has also trained colleagues in quantitative modelling, operational risk reviews and supervisory techniques, reflecting his expertise in capital optimisation, risk modelling and benchmarking.

Further, Awat has been recognized for his contribution to financial regulation, notably as the lead author of FCA’s consultation paper CP22/19, which shaped the baseline Financial Resilience Regulatory return.

Awat received a PhD in astrophysics from University College London. He also completed a Postdoctoral Fellowship in the same field, where his research focused on investigating how stars and galaxies form and evolve using supercomputer simulations.