With over a decade in finance, Umar began his career at PwC, auditing FTSE-listed and private equity-backed businesses during periods of complex change. He then moved into industry, where he helped carve out a $500m advertising business for exit, before becoming Financial Controller at a $1bn listed tech company, rebuilding trust in finance following a challenging shared service centre transition. He is now Group Financial Controller at Rafter, a fast-scaling European self-storage platform that has brought together five companies to unlock group synergies and pursue a €2bn valuation. Umar has driven the adoption of a finance tech stack that informs strategic decisions, leveraged AI and automation to scale finance delivery, and built a high-performing finance team across Europe—creating a unified function delivering speed, insight, and scale to power Rafter’s accelerated growth plans.