Speakers
William Lovell, Head of Future Technology at the Bank of England
William is the Head of Future Technology and focuses on looking at how the next generation of technology, and the generation after that will change financial services. He spends much of his time working on payment systems and have strong interests in blockchain, digital currency and machine learning. His background is in engineering and application development, so likes to keep a practical focus but also working with those developing policies. William is particularly interested in where policy and practice intersect and the opportunities that it creates.
Conrad Ford, Chief Product Officer at Allica Bank
Conrad is the Chief Product Officer at Allica Bank, which is building a new relationship bank for SMEs with the latest technology. Allica Bank was recently named by The Times newspaper as one of the UK’s Top 20 fintechs. Previously Conrad founded leading fintech Funding Options, named in the 2021 Financial Times FT1000 list of Europe’s fastest-growing firms, before stepping down as CEO in 2019. More recently, Conrad has advised a number of the UK’s flagship fintechs, including Starling Bank, IWOCA, Coconut and Trade Ledger.
Jack Bidgood, CEO of Thirdfort
Co-Founder and MD of Thirdfort, Jack has a long standing track record in investment banking. He was inspired to start Thirdfort when one of his friends lost his money in a property transaction. Thirdfortis an FCA regulated firm for property professionals offering data driven tools to verify clients’ identity, validate the source of funds and facilitate movement of money. Clients of lawyers using Thirdfort will receive a more digital transaction experience with a streamlined onboard, added security and transparency during property exchange.
Kirsty Rutter, Fintech Investment Director at Lloyds Banking Group
Kirsty has spent 25 years in financial services in roles spanning finance, strategy, risk, data, technology, innovation and strategic investment at six different Top Tier financial institutions. Her passion is organisational growth through cultural change; challenging the ways things “have always been done” and championing the opportunities that new tools and technologies bring.
Trained in finance, she rapidly moved on to develop business growth strategies as a leader in corporate and investment banking. Post the financial crisis, she pivoted towards regulatory change and managing the business implications, developing an expertise in data, operational and enterprise risk, leveraging Fintech in the early days to deliver data led insight.
Kirsty joined Lloyds Bank in 2019, where she designed and built the data architecture that underpins embedded controls in cloud native software. She moved on to become Risk Director for technology and all change programs across the Group. Today, as the Group Fintech Investment Director, Kirsty uses her diverse experience to support business growth objectives and delivery through strategic fintech investment; focused on creating value by actively managing the portfolio across all businesses.
Julia Demidova, CBDC Enterprise Strategist at FIS
Julia is focusing on CBDC strategy and how CBDCs could uplift the nations, whether through financial inclusion, financial deepening and digitization. Julia is also responsible for developing, maintaining, and strengthening of relationship with central banks, regulators, and policy makers and private sector institutions on the topic of CBDC and supporting full payments value chain, including central infrastructure and applications. Julia also created CBDC a suite of products and services for FIS to support full payments value chain, including central infrastructure and applications.
In 2018, Julia joined OMFIF a central bank think-tank based in London as a Director of Fintech & Private Markets. In 2020 Julia launched OMFIF’s Digital Monetary Institute (DMI) an independent platform for convening central banks on CBDCs, digital payments, the DLT and blockchain.
In 2013, Julia joined a single-family office in London. Julia was responsible for marketing and analysis of funds and hedge funds, before moving to the investor relations department. Here she was responsible for fundraising and marketing for project finance, private equity and venture capital co-investments. Julia has developed several significant relationships with family offices, sovereign funds and international commercial and development banks in Europe, Asia and the Middle East. Julia holds a BA (Hons) from EBS London in International Business. She speaks English, German and Arabic.
Rana Ghosh-Roy, Director in Artificial Intelligence and Emerging Technologies at Deloitte
Rana is an experienced Director in Artificial Intelligence and Emerging Technologies team at Deloitte, with a PhD in Information Management. He has extensive experience working with tech architecture, big data, analytics and cognitive processes. Rana has an impeccable track record of delivering some of the largest systems in the UK and was the design authority lead for delivering the UK’s Criminal Justice Secure Exchange. He also led the delivery of a large data services platform for one of the largest UK Government Department ,whilst ensuring full GDPR compliance. Rana is particularly proud of a Third Party Risk Management application design and delivery using IBM’s Watson product. This was further enhanced to deliver IBM’s own financial crime and due diligence product. Rana holds two patents from this product build. He is currently involved with building a biometric solution, using facial recognition, temperature readings and access management of turnstiles in a 3-factor contactless entry process.
Rana is well known in his industry for his co-authorship of BS 10008:2014 Evidential weight and legal admissibility of electronic information. He is an advisory board member of start-ups in the UK, US and India. He is an Adjunct Professor at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Kanpur India. He is the sponsor/donor of a scholarship/award at the IIT Bhilai India helping meritorious students from poorer background.
Ansgar Koene, Global AI Ethics and Regulatory Leader at EY (Ernst & Young)
Ansgar leads the AI related public policy team and contributes to the work on AI governance and EY’s Trusted AI framework. As part of this work, he represents EY on the OECD Network for Experts on AI (ONE.AI) and the Business at OECD Committee on Digital Economic Policy (BIAC CDEP).He is also a Senior Research Fellow at the Horizon Digital Economy Research institute (University of Nottingham) where he contributes to the policy impact and public engagement activities of the institute and advises on projects related to Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI).
Ansgar chairs the IEEE P7003 Standard for Algorithmic Bias Considerations working group and is one of the convenors for the CEN-CENELEC JTC21 “AI” committee’s ad hoc group on AI conformity assessment. He is a trustee for the 5Rgiths foundation for the Rights of Young People Online, is part of the 5Rights Digital Futures Committee, and advised on AI and Data Ethics for AfroLeadership, a pan-African NGO. He also sits on the AI Ethics Board of Hayden AI, a smart-city start-up.
Ansgar has a multi-disciplinary research background, having worked and published on topics ranging from Policy and Governance of Algorithmic Systems (AI), data-privacy, AI Ethics, AI Standards, bio-inspired Robotics, AI and Computational Neuroscience to experimental Human Behaviour/Perception studies. He holds an MSc in Electrical Engineering and a PhD in Computational Neuroscience.
Ben Azvine, Global Head of Security Research and Innovation at BT
Ben leads the global cyber security research programme in BT. He is responsible for setting direction and strategy for Security research, identifying innovation opportunities and leading a strong international team of researcher to develop new capabilities in collaboration with industrial and academic partners.
Ben has 30 years’ experience in both academia and industry. His previous roles included leading the IT research centre and head of business intelligence & customer analytics research at BT Group Chief Technology Office. He holds a BSc in Mechanical Engineering, an MSc in Control Engineering, a PhD in Intelligent Control Systems from Manchester University and an MBA from Imperial College, London. Having held research fellowship and lectureship posts in several universities, he joined BT in 1995 to lead a research programme to develop and exploit novel Artificial Intelligence technology to support next generation IT systems. Since then he has held senior, principal, chief research scientist posts at BT’s global R&D headquarters in Adastral Park, Ipswich where he is currently based.
He has edited two books and published more than 100 scientific articles on novel application of intelligent systems. He is an inventor of 70 patent applications, has won 4 BCS awards and an IET gold medals for IT innovation, is a current holder of a Royal Academy of Engineering visiting professorship at City and holds visiting professorship positions at the Universities of Bristol, Cranfield, Suffolk and Bournemouth. Ben is also a current fellow of Institute of Engineering and Technology (FIET) and Institute of Telecom Professionals (FITP). His current research interests include the application Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning to Cyber security, protection of critical national infrastructure, data analysis and information & knowledge management. His current projects include Advanced Threat Detection and Automated response, Visual Analytics for Cyber defence, cloud & Internet security, machine learning and anomaly detection in network data and future identity and access management.
Adrian Asher, CISO and Cloud Architect at Checkout.com
Adrian is passionate about cloud native patterns and ways in which security can enable the business he has worked across a range of industries in everything from startups to large financial institutions. His patents range from cloud identity, securing dev-ops practices to credential handling and vulnerability detection.
Arun Chaubey, Global BTS Insurance Program Manager at AXIS
Arun has been leading the digital transformation programs for the insurance companies in UK and EU. He’s a proponent of common sense and promotes diversity & inclusion at work. Arun strongly believes that to remain meaningful with the purpose of our lives, we need to contribute towards building a better society and to achieve this, Arun regularly interacts with students and professionals working in the tech sector from all over the world.
Devie Mohan, Founder and CEO of Burnmark
Devie is an influential writer, speaker and commentator on fintech, and is the co-founder and CEO of Burnmark, a fintech research company, that supplies research and data to all players of the fintech ecosystem. She has helped several banks, fintech startups, innovation groups and investors understand the trends in the fintech industry, helping them set their corporate, marketing and investment strategies. Devie is also a proponent of a fintech ecosystem where banks and startups collaborate to drive innovation. She is a panel member on the ING Group Think Forward initiative on better financial decision making. She is the author of “The Financial Services Guide to Fintech” and a columnist with several publications. She is actively involved in the fintech community and has been listed in the top 10 of several global fintech influencer lists.
Edgar Whitley, Associate Professor (Reader) at LSE
Edgar has a BSc (Econ) and PhD in Information Systems, both from LSE. He is the co-editor of Information Technology and People, Senior Editor for the Journal of Information Technology and the AIS Transactions of Replication Research. He has served as research co-chair for the European Conference on Information Systems in 1993, 2009 and 2021, track co-chair for the International Conference on Information Systems in 2003 and 2011. He was previously an associate editor for the European Journal of Information Systems and MIS Quarterly. At LSE Edgar has been Deputy Head of Department for Teaching and Learning, acting chair of the LSE Research Ethics Committee, Deputy Chair for the Classification Scheme Review Group that successfully introduced resits to LSE and a member of the LSE Impact Case Studies Review Panel. He has also been an academic member of the Professionalising the Service Project Board, Assessment Service Change Project and Architecture Board.
Edgar is an advisory board member for the Ada Lovelace Institute’s Ryder review of Biometric Regulation and an expert advisor for a series of Ada Lovelace Institute reports on technological responses to COVID-19. Edgar is co-chair of the Privacy and Consumer Advisory Group (PCAG) to the Government Digital Service and GOV.UK and a member of the Cabinet Office Digital Economy Act 2017 Debt and Fraud Information Sharing Review Board and the Cabinet Office Digital Economy Act 2017 Public Service Delivery Review Board, as well as a member of the DCMS National Data Strategy Forum. He is an academic member of the DCMS College of Experts. Edgar is also a member of the Scottish Government Digital Identity Scotland Expert Group and the Open Banking Expert Group. Edgar was the research coordinator of the influential LSE Identity Project on the UK’s proposals to introduce biometric identity cards; proposals that were scrapped following the 2010 General Election. His book with Gus Hosein Global Challenges for Identity Policies was published by Palgrave in 2010 and has provided the academic grounding for subsequent research on digital identity systems around the world. Edgar has also advised governments in Brazil, Chile, Ecuador, India, Jamaica, Japan and Mexico about the political, technological and social challenges of effective identity policies. He has contributed to reports for the World Bank, Omidyar Network and Centre for Global Development.
Edgar has successfully supervised eleven PhD students, including four with colleagues in other departments at LSE and is currently supervising two more. He has examined over 30 PhDs at LSE, University of Auckland, Brunel University, University of Edinburgh, IESE, Kings College London, University of Manchester, Nottingham Trent University, Oxford University, University of Pretoria, University of Southampton, University of Sydney, Trinity College Dublin and UCL. In 2021 Edgar was award both an ATLAS Award and an Impact Award by the Association for Information Systems and has previously been awarded the AIS Community Service Award and the AIS Sandra Slaughter Service Award.
Indranil Nath, Non-Executive Director and Vice President, Trustee Board at BCS
Indranil has over 30 years of experience in the Insurance and technology services industry. He has held senior-level positions managing property & casualty insurance business operations and technology services across Build, Sell and Delivery organisations globally. As Global Vice President and General Manager at DXC, he has led customer-facing engagements focusing on digital insurance and building technology operational resilience. Before it, he held regional leadership roles as Vice President, Insurance in IBM Europe, IBM Japan, and General Manager for IT at AXA Life Insurance Co Ltd. He has served on the Board of Directors for Xchanging Ins-Sure Holdings Limited, a joint venture with Lloyd’s London Market Group and International Underwriting Association. He also served on the board of Sun Microsystems Japan Ltd. He was a Non-Executive Director for Micello Inc., the world’s largest indoor mapping company and now part of HERE Technologies. He is currently a Non-Executive Director for BCS Learning & Development Ltd. He has consulted on the Ethics of Artificial Intelligence recommendation and independent reviews guidelines for Responsible AI. He is a member of the Responsible AI Certification Workgroup led by the Responsible AI Institute (RAI) in partnership with the World Economic Forum’s Global AI Action Alliance and the Schwartz Reisman Institute for Technology and Society at the University of Toronto. He is a contributing member of the United Nations Coalition for Digital Environmental Sustainability (CODES), where he consults on environmental, social and governance mandates. He is a Chartered Engineer, Fellow of BCS, The Chartered Institute for IT, and a Fellow of the Institute of Directors. Indranil was recognised as one of the Top 100 diverse leaders in Tech by the 2021 Tech Inclusion Council in the United States.
Indranil holds an MBA in Management and Information Systems and PhD in Software Engineering Management. He has completed Advanced Leadership Programme from Judge Business School, University of Cambridge, and an Executive Certificate Programme in Data Science (Specialisation), from the Dept of Biostatistics, Bloomberg School of Public Health, John Hopkins University.
James Varga, Founder of DirectID (formerly The ID Co.)
James founded DirectID (formerly The ID Co.) in 2011 with a mission to leverage the identity and data users have with their bank accounts, giving them access to products and services conveniently - to let them prove their identity, financial health and credit risk in seconds. Today, DirectID’s platform, data, and unique insight engines offer decision makers a more comprehensive view of applicants and customers across the credit lifecycle. This enables more informed and appropriate decisions. Based in the UK, DirectID’s reach is global and rapidly growing, with over 13,000+ bank connections giving them access to 1.5bn users in over 45 countries. The fintech operates across banking, consumer and SME lending, utilities, gambling and gaming, the gig economy, and many more sectors.
James is passionate about Open Banking and the opportunities it provides to redefine the current credit risk industry. He is also enthusiastic as to how FinTechs can help accelerate the adoption of these trends and technologies in the market. James is active in a number of local and global efforts to help people do more online, including Fintech Scotland, the Fintech Delivery Panel (FDP), FDATA, Open Banking Excellence, and Trust In Digital Life (TDL), whose mission is to create a trusted ecosystem that protects the data and assets of citizens and enterprises across Europe. He is a sought-after keynote speaker, regularly presenting on bank data and Open Banking to audiences across the globe.
Lisa Townsend, Police and Crime Commissioner for Surrey
Lisa is the Police and Crime Commissioner for Surrey and has responsibility for holding Surrey Police Force to account, the Force’s budget and all police estate in the county. Prior to being elected in May 2021 Lisa held a number of policy and communications roles, including working in the House of Commons; as a director of a communications business; and as head of media and communications for the Institute of Directors.
Surrey is one of the most prosperous counties in the UK, with a large number of national and international businesses and organisations headquartered in the county. Lisa works closely with teams across Surrey Police, including the economic and cyber crime units, who are keen to promote prevention of the type of attacks we know are increasingly common. Lisa lives in Surrey with her husband.
Marco Jean Aboav, CEO of Arbcircle and Etna Research
Marco is an entrepreneur, data scientist, tech consultant, and associate professor of Financial Technology and angel investor in tech and fintech startups. He is CEO of Arbcircle, a software-as-a-service risk management tool for crypto-currencies exposures. He is also CEO of Etna Research, a software-as-a-service forecasting technology company that serves hedge funds, family offices and financial institutions. Dr. Aboav provides consultancy services for tech startups mainly in Europe.
Mark Hipperson, Founder and CEO of Ziglu
Mark has co-founded a UK retail bank and two financial technology businesses. He acts as an advisor to investment and private equity firms and is a regular Fintech commentator and speaker. Mark is the founder and CEO of Ziglu, who have launched the world’s first, truly integrated ‘crypto challenger’. Ziglu enables customers to hold balances in both fiat and cryptocurrencies and buy, sell and send money instantly plus spend their cash on a Mastercard debit card.
Previously, he co-founded Starling Bank where he was responsible for helping to secure the UK banking licence with regulators and obtaining the initial $70m funding the Bank achieved in December 2015. He was also responsible for the design, build, implementation and support of the Bank's IT services platform, apps and infrastructure. Mark started his career at Barclays where he was deputy CTO and Head of Technology for the Barclays Group.
Nigel Cannings, CEO of Intelligent Voice
Nigel has over 25 years’ experience in both Law and Technology, is the co-founder of Intelligent Voice and a pioneer in all things voice and NLP, being the first person to commercially GPU-accelerate speech recognition in 2014. He has patents in speech processing, NLP and cryptographic processing of data. Nigel is also a regular speaker at industry events, including 8 appearances at NVIDIA’s annual GTC.
Peter Tillotson, Director of Acumed Consulting Ltd
Peter has been interested in data and how to use it since he was a boy. Having earned a PhD in Artificial Intelligence (specialising in Machine Learning for internet traffic routing), Peter spent over 20 years working for large consultancy firms, delivering technical solutions to banking, social media, e-sports and gaming industries. His claim to fame is his analytics work on one of the biggest large-scale distributed computer games in the world. Peter is also a world class specialist in creating algorithms that work fast on large data sets, and helping businesses use that data to make better decisions.
Sam De Silva, Partner at CMS UK
Sam is a solicitor and Partner in the Technology and Outsourcing practice at the Top 10 global law firm, CMS Cameron McKenna Nabarro Olswang LLP. He specialises in complex and strategic technology projects and has specialist experience in FinTech acting both for customers and suppliers. Sam also regularly advises on data protection, privacy and cyber-security issues.
At an international level Sam is the former UK representative on the EU Commission’s Expert Group on Cloud Computing Contracts and the current UK representative on the IT Law Committee of the Bars and Law Societies of Europe (CCBE) Sam is a former Global Board of Trustee for the Chartered Institute of Procurement and Supply (CIPS) and is the immediate past Chair of the Tech & Sourcing Committee of iTech Law. At the national level, he is the past Chair on the Law Society's Technology and Law Committee (but still a committee member) and a committee member of the EU Committee of the Law Society. Sam is on the Data Law Committee of the City of London Law Society and is on the Technical Strategy Board of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of England and Wales (ICAEW). Sam is an elected Trustee of The Chartered Institute for IT (BCS), is on the Council of the BCS and the Chair of the Legal Specialist Group of the BCS.
Sam is an expert in legal risk management and was the Co-convenor on an ISO Working Group which led the development of the first ISO Standard on the Management of Legal Risk (ISO 31022) and in late 2019 won a prestigious BSI Standards Makers Award in the category of “Representing the UK” for his work on this ISO Standard. In 2020 at the 11th annual CIR Risk Management Awards Sam was winner of the Risk Management Champion Award and at the Global Sourcing Association UK Awards for Best Practice in Strategic Sourcing 2020/21 Sam’s work was recognised by being named winner of the ‘Social Programme of the Year’ category. Sam was nominated as a Finalist for Solicitor (Private Practice) of the Year 2020 at the Law Society Excellence Awards 2020. Sam was the winner of the Governance Champion of the Year at The Chartered Governance Institute Awards 2021. Sam is also the Chair of the Legal Special Interest Group at the Institute of Risk Management (IRM).
Shiv Agrawal, CEO of EarthID
Shiv is a technology entrepreneur with a focus on improving human lives through the power of technology. He is currently leading Myearth.Id towards building a decentralised identity management platform, with a vision of providing a Universal Id to all Human Beings. Shiv is also volunteering as the European Lead and London President for “Government Blockchain Association”, a global non-profit organisation with over 100 chapters across the world, helping governments understand and adopt blockchain technology.
Steve Jackson, Head of Financial Crime at Covéa Insurance
Following more than 22 years service as a police officer, Steve has spent a further 22 years working in counter-fraud. As Head of Financial Crime for Covéa Insurance, Steve leads the development of Covéa Insurance’s internal and external counter-fraud strategy, which encompasses all aspects of financial crime. Steve was appointed as Chair of the Insurance Fraud Investigators Group in December 2016, which has the overall objective of encouraging collaboration throughout the fraud investigation community by providing a platform to share knowledge, expertise, intelligence and training.
Prior to joining Covéa Insurance, Steve held senior fraud management roles with Equity Insurance and Zurich Insurance together with specialist investigation roles at Cunningham Lindsey and Capita Insurance Services. Steve also chaired the North West Fraud Forum, which had the objective of sharing counter-fraud advice between local businesses and public authorities within the region and now also works as an Independent Consultant.
Tony Allen, CEO of Age Check Certification Services
Tony is a Chartered Trading Standards Practitioner with over 25 years of experience in age restricted sales, law and practice. He is Chair of the UK Government’s Expert Panel on Age Restrictions and Vice-Chair of Digital Policy Alliance Internet Safety and Policy Group. Tony is also author of the Law of Age Restricted Sales in England and Wales, now in its 2nd Edition, and an approved trainer for Highfield Qualifications.
Tony Fish, Maverick, Pioneer and Adventurer
30 years of being an outsider, usually 6 sigmas from the norm, looking for trends that are just beyond any strategic plan. Very focussed on problems of governance and oversight in a digital world and how identity might help solve an error-correction problem. Definitely provocative and overly optimistic at the most inappropriate times. Neurodiverse with a passion for risk.