About Karim Lameer

I’m Karim. I build AI that finance teams can trust with the number.

Master Anaplanner. CIMA-qualified Management Accountant. 15+ years across EPM, FP&A, and finance automation in complex, reporting-heavy teams. I’ve lived the manual close and the board-deck scramble from the inside — and I build the systems that make the numbers defensible.

The discipline behind Grounded

Grounded came out of a simple, stubborn observation: the AI tools finance teams were being handed couldn’t be trusted with a number. They’d guess. They’d blend versions. They’d never show their work — and they’d do it all with total confidence.

So I built the whole system the other way round.

Provenance and honest abstention aren’t features bolted on at the end — they’re the starting point. Every answer has to trace back to the exact figure it came from, treat “which version?” as a first-class question, and say “I can’t confirm that” when the documents don’t support an answer. That’s the only way to build AI you’d put in front of a controller.

Finance and technology, one person

Most automation people understand technology. Most finance people understand finance. Very few understand both. I do.

I’m a CIMA-qualified Management Accountant who made a career being genuinely good at Excel, then at Anaplan, then at the code and AI around them. I can write the Python, build the integrations, ship the AI interfaces, and produce the audit trail that finance and audit can defend — without a translation tax between “the finance requirement” and “the technical build.”

One person, both languages.

How I work

Every finance team is different. Each problem is unique and needs a solution that fits it — not a template.

The method:

1. Understand the process end-to-end — dig into the actual pain, not the surface symptom.
2. Build for people, not systems — solutions should make the work easier, not add ceremony.
3. Verify before you trust — if a number a decision depends on can’t be traced to its source, it doesn’t ship.
4. Results-focused — if it doesn’t deliver measurable value, it’s not worth building.

I believe in quiet, reliable automation — not flashy features that look impressive but don’t hold up. The best system is often invisible. It just returns the right number, with the receipts.

What I’ve shipped

Across 15+ years in finance operations and consulting, this is the work I’ve put my hands on:

• Month-end close: 12 days → 8 hours (85% reduction)
• FP&A forecasting cycle: 1 week → 1 day; quarterly → monthly rolling forecasts
• User adoption: rescued a failed planning implementation, 60+ active users from zero
• Invoice processing: 1 week → hours (90%+ reduction)
• Self-service finance data: minutes/hours → seconds via an AI interface trained on the finance dataset

Work with me if:

• A wrong figure isn’t a productivity hit for you — it’s a credibility event
• You need answers from your filings, reports, and schedules that you can actually verify
• Your finance team spends more time moving and reconciling data than analysing it
• You’re upper-mid-market: the version problem is real, but the platform vendors aren’t solving it for you
• You want someone who speaks both finance and technology, with an audit trail the controller can defend

Credentials & experience

Credentials

• CIMA-qualified Management Accountant (CGMA)
• Master Anaplanner
• Make.com Level 4 (top 1%)
• MSc in Information Technology, Keele University
• 15+ years in financial operations

Experience

15+ years across EPM, FP&A, and finance automation in reporting-heavy and regulated finance teams — biotech, pharma, media, and large corporates.

Trust the number. Grounded is in active development with early design partners. Based in the UK, working with finance teams globally. The fastest way to see whether this fits your team is a short conversation — connect on LinkedIn or email me.