ACA Group appoints Neeraj Karhade as chief financial officer

ACA Group, a governance, risk, and compliance (GRC) consultancy focusing on financial services clients, has hired Neeraj Karhade as CFO.

Based in New York, Karhade brings more than 20 years of experience in finance, business operations, organizational transformation, and private equity to the role. He has deep expertise leading complex business transformations across industries, with experience as a CFO, private equity investor, and entrepreneur.

Karhade joins ACA from Transformco, the owner of Sears and Kmart, where he spent over a year as CFO and oversaw financial reporting, audit and compliance, treasury, tax, strategic planning, and corporate finance. Before that, he spent a year as CFO of Salesforce consultancy Silverline, where he led financial strategy and direction through the Covid pandemic.

Prior to that, Karhade spent over four years as a managing director in the strategic finance practice of Accordion Partners, a consulting firm specializing in private equity.

Earlier in his career, he founded and ran an independent consulting firm and a private equity firm focusing on investments in India’s logistics, transportation, and export-oriented industries. Karhade began his career as an analyst in the M&A practice of Morgan Stanley and as an associate at Soros Private Equity Partners.

He has an MBA from Harvard University and a bachelor’s degree in economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

“Following our recent merger with Foreside, we’re now serving over 6,300 clients,” Shvetank Shah, CEO of ACA Group, said. “As we get larger and more complex, our entire financial and analytics infrastructure needs to mature to support this expansion. Neeraj’s experience not just as a financial leader but as chief performance officer will help scale ACA through our next chapter.”

Genstar Capital last year merged portfolio company Foreside with ACA Group, forming one of the largest GRC consultancies focusing on the financial services industry. ACA Group today has more than 1,110 employees in the US, UK, and Malta providing GRC advisory and technology solutions to asset and wealth managers – including platforms to automate and simplify compliance and marketing for clients.

“GRC as an industry is constantly evolving, and ACA has evolved along with it, oftentimes even ahead of its clients and regulators,” Karhade said. “I admire and respect the progress made by ACA to date and look forward to participating in what is to come.”