Sonia Haque-Vatcher
Sonia Haque-Vatcher

Sonia Haque-Vatcher

Partner, Risk Advisory

Sydney

+61 2 9258 5948 | +61 412 442 802
sonia.haque-vatcher@ashurstperkins.com

Introduction

Sonia brings over 20 years of global experience transforming how organisations harness data, technology, and AI to manage risk and drive innovation

Sonia Haque-Vatcher is the lead Australian partner of Risk Advisory's Data & Analytics practice. With a background in industry and (Big 4) consulting, Sonia has experience across financial services, life sciences, energy, government, consumer and retail sectors.

She has led global teams of data and analytics professionals to deliver world-class analytical and AI solutions, as well as shaping and leading significant risk, regulatory and compliance programs to ensure appropriate data risk management, data quality and data governance. She also brings experience in designing, implementing and embedding AI governance.

  • Major Healthcare Provider | Anita Choi and Phil Hardy | 2026 | Leading the data migration strategy and execution for a complex multi-perimeter separation to multiple acquirers, managing the secure delineation and transfer of sensitive health data across distinct transaction boundaries while ensuring privacy compliance and operational continuity.
  • Leading Australian Energy Retailer | Sonia Haque-Vatcher | 2026 | Developed a tailored risk assessment / diagnostic to enable business units to identify and classify high-risk automated decision-making (ADM) use cases across the enterprise, supporting compliance with emerging AI governance obligations.
  • Major Fast Food Restaurant Operator | Ian Bolster | 2026 | Built a bespoke data analytics solution to support the defence of a high-stakes employment class action, ingesting extensive roster and time-attendance datasets across multiple sites and years to produce individualised litigation-ready employee reports, anomaly detection, and a single source of truth for discovery and settlement modelling, underpinned by full evidentiary integrity.
  • Big 4 Bank | Emma Butler | 2026 | Identified and assessed AI use cases across the organisation to support enterprise-wide AI adoption, enabling prioritisation based on strategic value, feasibility, and risk appetite.
  • Global Tier-1 Mining Organisation | Sonia Haque-Vatcher | 2025 | Engaged to define the operating model for data governance and privacy, expand the remit of governance to encompass AI, develop an aligned data strategy and delivery roadmap for data and AI risk management across the enterprise.
  • Leading Energy Provider | Sonia Haque-Vatcher | 2025 | Designed and established a fit-for-purpose data governance operating model and enterprise data strategy, addressing regulatory exposure through defined roles, forums, identification of critical data elements and integration with the enterprise risk framework - enabling sustainable, organization-wide data governance and improved risk management maturity.
  • Major Mining and Resources Company | Julia Sutherland | 2024-2025 | Delivered an end-to-end remediation program encompassing review of records spanning a five-year period, data-driven quantification of individual exposure, systematic entitlement calculations across multiple entities, and a comprehensive multi-channel outreach program that achieved a 94% recovery rate to impacted individuals.
  • Big 4 Bank* | Sonia Haque-Vatcher | 2023 | Developed and implemented a "card not present" AI model, designed to detect fraudulent transactions when a physical payment card is not present during payment transactions, by analysing multiple relevant data points and patterns to accurately identify high risk of fraud. Use of model has driven prevention of an additional $10m AUD fraudulent transactions per annum.
  • Big 4 Bank* | Sonia Haque-Vatcher | 2022 | Led the delivery of the 100 Critical Risk Data Elements (CRDE) Program - an Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA) requirement for Financial Institutions to lift the standard of its top 100 risk data elements and ensure compliance with data management framework and standards and CPG 235 – for an ASX listed Australian Big 4 Bank. Successfully met all regulatory requirements and commitments and well as a significant maturity and awareness uplift of data risk management across the Group and overall risk rating reduction.
  • Big 4 Bank* | Sonia Haque-Vatcher | 2021| Chief Product Owner for ASX listed Australian Big 4 Bank Privacy Enforceable undertaking.Responsible for setting the strategy and future target state for the Group-wide data privacy program and executing the action plan for the Enforceable Undertaking, as agreed with the regulator (Office of the Australian Commission (OAIC)), as an integrated, Group-wide change program. This included uplift to policy, privacy procedures and retention standard, privacy impact assessments, access controls to key applications, privacy risk management and monitoring of third parties and contractors, and identification of all applications that collect or hold any personal customer information.

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