Past Speakers – Europe

AI in Payments & Cybersecurity Risk Summit

Rūta Merkevičiūtė

Head of Division for E-money and Payment institution supervision

Rūta Merkevičiūtė

Rūta Merkevičiūtė is a Head of Division for E-money and Payment institution supervision at Bank of Lithuania, responsible for supervising over 100 E-money and Payment institutions. She is also a member of Lithuanian’s Payment council group, which is dedicated to investigate to further implementation of Open Banking in Lithuania.
She has professional legal qualification as an attorney-at law and for the past 10 years has been working both in private sector and financial sector’s supervision in the areas of responsibility that include AML, payments, open-banking, lending, crowdfunding, investment services, FinTech industry, Regulatory Sandbox and transposition of EU Directives such as PAD, PSD2 and AMLD4.

Sara Öhrvall

Chief Transformation Officer

Sara Öhrvall

Sara Öhrvall is Chief Transformation Officer at SEB. She is responsible for the digital and sustainability transformation agenda and is a member of the Executive Management Team. Prior to joining SEB, Sara was a Board Director of SEB as well as one of the major owners of the bank, Investor. She has a background in media, as Senior Vice President, R&D at Bonnier, the leading Nordic media group of 175 companies in 15 countries. Sara has also worked as Product Development Director at Volvo Cars and as an entrepreneur, starting two different consulting firms. She used to be a tech columnist in the financial daily newspaper in Sweden and in 2020, she debuted as an author with the book ”The Future of You”, about the use of emerging technologies for human augmentation.

Angela Johnson De Wet

Head of Technology Change Risk

Angela Johnson De Wet

Prior to working at Lloyds, Angela worked At Deutsche Bank in the Cloud, Anti-Financial Crime Analytics, Data Quality and Finance Risk and Regulatory Reporting change and transformation teams.

Before joining Deutsche Bank, Angela worked as a Senior Manager at EY across Asia Pacific and EMEIA within the Financial Services Organisation focusing on Corporate Banking and Capital Markets transformation and advisory programmes. Angela started her career at IBM in Australia working as a developer, tester, designer and then business analyst and project manager.

Angela has an honours degree in Mechanical Engineering (Mechatronics / Robotics) and Computer Science from the University of Melbourne, Australia.Prior to working at Lloyds, Angela worked At Deutsche Bank in the Cloud, Anti-Financial Crime Analytics, Data Quality and Finance Risk and Regulatory Reporting change and transformation teams.

Before joining Deutsche Bank, Angela worked as a Senior Manager at EY across Asia Pacific and EMEIA within the Financial Services Organisation focusing on Corporate Banking and Capital Markets transformation and advisory programmes. Angela started her career at IBM in Australia working as a developer, tester, designer and then business analyst and project manager.

Angela has an honours degree in Mechanical Engineering (Mechatronics / Robotics) and Computer Science from the University of Melbourne, Australia.

Stefan Hacker

Director

Stefan Hacker

Stefan is a Fellow of the International Compliance Association (FICA) and a seasoned compliance expert with nearly 20 years of experience. He has covered all major and many less common products, worked on the buy side, sell side, in traditional banking, payments, Fintech, in wholesale and retail.

On four occasions so far he has been registered as head of compliance (and MLRO) of banks/brokers for a number of major jurisdictions and regularly reports into the heads of compliance of medium-sized and large firms, including a top tier investment bank.

Alastair Speare-Cole

President & GM, Insurance

Alastair Speare-Cole

Prior to joining QOMPLX, he served as Chief Underwriting Officer at Qatar Re. He began his career as a graduate trainee at Jardine Matheson (JIB) and worked for ten years at Aon Re UK as COO. He also held the position of Chief Executive Officer at JLT Towers from 2012–2015, and has held board-level appointments in reinsurance and banking subsidiaries.

 

Anna Issel

Managing Director, Global Head Anti-Financial Crime International Private Bank

Anna Issel

Anna is a Global Head of Anti-Financial Crime for the International Private Bank Division of Deutsche Bank. Anna is responsible for a portfolio of 3 million clients and covers all anti-financial crime related topics including KYC, optimisation of processes related to client on-boarding and transaction monitoring. Anna’s focus is on developing AI and machine learning tools to prevent and detect financial crime.

Anna spent almost her entire career at DB, joining as an analyst. She has held leadership positions in Group Strategy, focusing on Principal M&A as well as Integration and Transformation. Subsequently, Anna joined Group Audit as a Chief Auditor for Anti-Financial Crime, building out dedicated AML and Sanctions teams, and working closely with the key regulators.

Kate Bohn

Accelerator & Incubator Lead | CTO Innovation | Group Transformation

Kate Bohn

With 20-plus years in Financial Services, Kate Bohn is a leader, strategist, and innovator for the global finance industry. She has worked across a range of roles and areas, including Markets, Finance, Strategy, Technology, and Operations within a software house, Deutsche Bank, Citi, and Lloyds Banking Group: at all times, the common thread has been a clear focus on innovation and transformation, and she is currently the “Accelerator and Incubator Lead” for Lloyds, working with start-ups and scale-ups on known and emerging focus areas.
Having started with a career in the Art world, she is a champion of diversity, and on a mission for the simplification and democratization of understanding/ access in Financial Services. Alongside her day job and 24/7 role as a parent, Kate is co-founder of the ‘Technical Women in Leadership’ network (aimed at senior/ executive level women in technology and Fintech), and a mentor for several communities including ‘Global Women in Payments’. She is a prime example of ‘squiggly careers’ and how diversity of thinking enables both individuals and robust outcomes to thrive in Financial Services – as evidenced by her recent ”Woman in Technology” award at the Fintech Futures 2020 Banking Tech Awards.

Michael Berger

Head of AI Insurance

Michael Berger

Michael Berger is the head of Munich Re’s AI insurance unit, which structures insurance solutions for risks around AI implementation, including performance shortfall and discrimination risks. He and his team predominantly work with AI start-ups. Michael has been based in Palo Alto, California, USA since 2016. Prior to his current role in Silicon Valley, he worked for Munich Re in Munich, Germany, and London, UK, where he was responsible for structuring innovative corporate insurance and reinsurance solutions. He holds a Masters in Information and Data Science from UC Berkeley, a PhD in Finance and a Masters in Business Administration from the Bundeswehr University Munich, and a Masters in Philosophy from Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich.

Ritesh Jain

Co-Founder

Ritesh Jain

Ritesh is a Co-Founder at Infynit – Humanising Credit and Credit Cards, he is a Former COO at HSBC. He is an Entrepreneurial Technology Leader & Board Advisor with global experience across various sectors including Payments & Banking, He led the future of payments for VISA and introduced Apple Pay, built a wealth management company as a founder CTO. Presently, he is a member of a G20 Initiative for financial inclusion; Advisor to Open Banking in EU & Africa, Harvard Business Review (HBR), payment regulators and government bodies for the initiative in social and financial inclusion and a member of MIT Global Tech Panel. Past roles include mentor to the UK Parliament Digital Service & Startups.

Joop Vahl

Director |Wholesale Banking Advanced Analytics and Artificial Intelligence

Joop Vahl

Working as Chief Product Owner a.i. and senior Product Manager for the Tribe Wholesale Banking Advanced Analytics, leading one of its flagship products, Domino.

I am a financial professional with over 18 years of experience in banking. Usually regarded as a subject matter expert with a passion for change, operational excellence and continuous improvement.

A pragmatic, goal-oriented, and positive personality who knows how to create a vision and take it forward. I am capable of operationalizing this vision to bring the organization and the product where they want to be. I tend to hold a long term perspective with a thorough crisis management approach

Made the step from a core banking background towards Innovation, Artificial Intelligence and Advanced Analytics, following my personal growth into change management and Lean (six sigma) driven process improvements. To me there lies a unique opportunity to create value from the overlap between business knowledge and tech affinity.

Kaspar Loog

Head of Payments and Operations

Kaspar Loog

Entrepreneur who is fond of technology and building new businesses around it. My strong side has tended to be on the borderline of building business around IT or IT around business

Pritesh Shah

EMEA & APAC Delivery Manager

Pritesh Shah

Pritesh is an accomplished fintech programme manager with an extensive experience in leading delivery of global strategic technology change projects for tier 1 investment banks including Bank of America, Credit Suisse, HSBC, Barclays & Deutsche Bank. Pritesh possesses a successful track record in delivery of multi-faceted business & technology transformation programmes covering client onboarding, regulatory transformation, trade processing and surveillance with a strong focus on innovation and a value driven approach. His most recent role BNP Paribas focused on delivery of supervisory and fraud prevention surveillance solution leveraging AI & cloud computing capabilities through partnerships with best in class vendors.

Sara Hesla

Senior Vice President, Head of Claims

Sara Hesla

Sara is Senior Vice President and Head of Claims in Storebrand Group. Sara is an experienced and strategic Process Improvement Manager with passion for working cross functional between tech and business and accelerating change. Sara is also head of Fraud detection and AML (Within Insurance) and has during the last 4 years improved the hit rate on detected fraud and withheld payouts with 80%. Sara has previously worked with Lean in Storebrand and as a project leader in Business Sweden as well as with IT and banking. Sara has a Master’s degree focused in International Economics from Umeå School of Business and Economics.

Jeroen Van Zeeland

Head of Analytics

Jeroen Van Zeeland

Jeroen is the Head of Analytics for Storebrand, Norway’s largest private asset manager and is driving the company to become data-driven. He is responsible for creating the analytics department and for delivering analytics projects to all Storebrand’s lines of business. Under his leadership, the department has shown strong growth and results: increasing revenue, reducing cost, improve effectiveness and reduce time-to-market.

Before working at Storebrand Jeroen worked as a data science consultant. Jeroen has studied both Aerospace Engineering and Mechanical Engineering at the Delft University of Technology, Philosophy at the Erasmus University Rotterdam and holds an MBA certificate from the London School of Economics.

Kenneth Farrugia

Chief Business Development Officer

Kenneth Farrugia

Kenneth Farrugia joined Bank of Valletta plc (BOV), Malta’s largest banking group, in 1985 and has since occupied various positions within the Bank. Kenneth currently holds the post of Chief Business Development Officer at Bank of Valletta plc and sits on the Group’s Management Board. He is amongst others, responsible for the improvement of the Bank’s market position, as well as the achievement of financial
growth and long-term strategic business goals. He is also a Governor of FinanceMalta, Malta’s national promotional body for financial services, and also serves as Chairman of the MASA. He is also the Chairman of Malita Investments plc which is listed on the Malta Stock Exchange.