Founder at epiphanic GmbH

CEO, Business Development, Innovation

Experienced IT Professional and Fintech Entrepreneur in the CEE region
leading nationwide IT systems at large, with clients like IBM,

Santander Consumer Bank, A1 Telekom Austria, ASFINAG AG, oeKb
Österr.Kontrollbank, Federal Ministry of Interior Austria,
and previous Cyber Security Agent, GovCERT-Member at Federal Chancellery Austria.
Extensive track record in Software-Engineering & IT Business Development.
Invented PayMagnet 2014, Invested 300k of own assets,

Evaluated by ScientificGames, GCA, and WalMart prior to CurrentC.

Awarded among the top startups in fintech in 2016 at Pioneers 500,
Announced as one of the Top 20 Fintech-companies by BBVA, Featured at
NextMoney NYC, and Fintech-Connect UK. Signed partnerships with UATP, and Wirecard.

2008 Bachelor of Science, Software Engineering
Technical University Vienna
2010 Master of Science, Information & Knowledge
Management – Technical University Vienna
Since 2011, PhD, Head of Brain Computer Interfaces
Lab, Technical University Vienna, publications in
IEEE

Digital Channels and Contact Centre Division Assistant Director

Bojan is Specialist in Applied studies in e-Business from Faculty of Technical Sciences, Novi Sad and owns MBA in leadership and project management from United Business Institutes, Brussels. He has proven experience and know-how in areas related to alternative channels gained while working for some of the leading banks in the country. He strongly supports innovation and changes that would result in business practices improvements. Many acknowledgments and positive critiques are appointed to Mr. Pokrajac for outstanding presentations of new technologies in e-Business worldwide.

Banking, Payments & Innovation expert

I have spent my career in the borderline between business and technology and bring expertise from senior leadership roles that combine Financial Services & Banking with E-commerce & Digital Projects. Having worked across the board in Financial Services & Banking (key roles in Commercial / Corporate & SME Banking, Retail Banking and Bancassurance) I have an end-to-end understanding of the entire business and of both the challenges and opportunities that financial institutions face today. On the technology side, I bring hands-on experience from the start-up and e-business space where I have had the chance to explore how technology and new e-business models can drive innovation and help businesses grow. It has been fascinating throughout my career not only to watch the convergence of these multiple / parallel worlds but also to take an active role in its shaping. Innovation, technology and partnerships with Fintechs have been at the center of my work and attention over the last years.

Key domains that represent my experience / background / focus include the following:

– Financial Services & Banking
– Software and Technology Services
– Digitization / e-commerce / e-business / digital projects
– Payments, Foreign Exchange (FX)
– Money Transfer
– Trade Finance / Receivables’ Finance / Invoice Discounting
– Cash Management

– Innovation Management
– Strategic Planning and Implementation
– Leadership / Team and People Management
– Building businesses, products and teams from scratch
– Partnership with Start-ups and Fintechs
– Project management
– Product management / Product development
– Customer Relationship Management
– Sales: Training, guiding and coaching sales networks and alternative channels
– Multicultural background
– Process improvement: Six-Sigma Green Belt

ETFmatic | Chief Commercial Officer

Tom is a strong business development professional and analyst with a demonstrated history of working in andfounding tech startups. Post studying law and economics at the University of Otago in New Zealand, Tom
moved to Madrid where he helped successful Spanish startup, We Are Knitters enter and flourish in the American market as US Country Manager. After founding his own startup in the fashion-tech sector, Tom
managed a family company for a period before ultimately joining ETFmatic as Chief Commercial Officer in August 2018. In his current role Tom divides his time between providing preliminary legal advice, developing
strategies to enhance operational efficiency, and between forming, negotiating and maintaining strategic partnerships with companies in the financial sector.

Michael heads the German Banking & Finance practice in our Frankfurt office and is a member of the international Banking & Finance practice group

Michael mainly advises in the areas of national and international financial and capital markets law, as well as banking, payment services, insurance regulation, and corporate law. He has many years of experience of advising on the implementation and restructuring of transactions, both in Germany and internationally. Michael has also corresponded and liaised with lawyers on finance transactions and restructurings in over 50 jurisdictions worldwide. Michael works with clients across a large variety of sectors including Financial Services, Payment Services, e-commerce, FinTech, InsureTech, RegTech, Energy & Utilities, Telecommunications and Media. He advises international investors and banks on their European investments and credit exposures. His areas of expertise exceed general lending work and range from distressed investments through financing of private equity transactions to loan trading. He also advises on the ongoing management of loan portfolios, other securitised assets and investments in companies and capital market transactions. He has particular expertise in LMA-based and other structured loans as well as German securities law, public take over law and German and European stock corporation law (Societas Europaea). Incumbents and start-ups, rely on Michael’s know-how in all fields of regulatory law and its interdependence with digitalisation. Michael has remarkable knowledge on new and disruptive technologies such as blockchain and distributed ledgers, and the legal issues the respective business models face. The scope of support ranges from early steps in the lobbying process of new legislation to the comprehensive application of regulatory law to all sorts of FinTech, InsureTech, RegTech and other related business models with the result of practical solutions for the client. For example, he advised Mastercard on the effective lobbying efforts in the course of new anti-money laundering laws in Germany and Europe. On a regular basis, he gives presentations at conferences and expert opinions as well as interviews for the daily and specialised press regarding the future of banking and the financial services industry. In one of his landmark cases he advised Germany’s bank bailout fund on the development of interim and final stabilisation measures for WestLB AG in accordance with the Financial Market Stabilisation Act, including the formation of the first German “bad bank”. This highly complex case led to the establishment of new standards in the banking regulation in Germany.

CEO of Crassula

Daria Dubinina’s bio: Daria is a FinTech entrepreneur and a CEO of Crassula. She has over 9 years of experience in eCommerce and payments. Daria has been leading strategy and international business development for several payment companies, was responsible for signing international agreements with Paypal, IBM, Alipay, Riot Games, and other leading names.

Managing Director, Penser

Kebbie Sebastian is the Managing Director of Penser, a specialist consulting firm providing strategy, due diligence and digital transformation services to the banking and payments industry. Previously Mr. Sebastian was responsible for PayPal’s financial products business in the UK and held senior leadership roles at Barclaycard, where he led Global Product Development and at Bank of America where he was a Senior Vice President, New Product Development. He holds an MBA from the Darden School of Business at the University of Virginia.

Customer Experience, Project Management, and Data Protection

Gabor is a passionate advocate of customer experience and quality management. His experience covers both the financial sector and manufacturing as he delivered state of the art solutions in diverse environments. Having spent over fifteen years in project management and business improvement, Gabor has always worked hard to ensure that the teams he works for are as customer focused as possible.
Most recently, he was Group Head of Quality and Complaint at Erste Group Bank AG, developing quality teams in their local banks, managing a portfolio of 80+ projects and introducing a Board level KPI scheme to drive customer-centricity and innovation across all segments.

MBA – Director of Alternative Banking Channel

He is a Business Development and Project Management professional with more than 14 years’ experience in the Life Insurance and Consumer Finance sectors, advising banks and insurance carriers how effectively implement new products and services into the product portfolio. Currently he is leading the execution of high-impact, online business & sales strategies through digital transformation, partnerships with start-ups and tech companies at BOŚ BANK in Poland, the only Bank in a CEE region driven entirely by a eco-friendly ethos & objectives. He provides competitive insights and innovate on competitive strategy & Open Banking directions – leader of the PSD2, Open Banking or Durable medium projects. Beside its core job he is an independent Fintech & InsurTech advisor, providing strategic guidelines to the start-ups at the various stage of development.

Fairly recently he worked as a FinTech Partnership Director at Alior Bank S.A. With Alior Bank, his goal was to find, guide and foster collaboration with most promising newcomers to financial sector in order to develop and support products and services that truly disturb banking industry and create unique user experience in their respective verticals. Prior to joining Alior Bank Tomasz had experience as a Country Ambassador to WeSavvy Limited (Dublin based InsurTech startup). Within WeSavvy Tomasz was responsible for building a brand and proposition awareness, and expanding commercial cooperation with business partners across Poland, CEE and ME regions.

Education

Tomasz holds a University degree in Administration from Law and Administration faculty and Postgraduate degree in Marketing and Marketing Strategy form Warsaw School of Economics. He completed EMBA at Warwick Business School in London, with a focus on Strategy, Entrepreneurship and Performance Management in order to boost his managerial capabilities to bring in digital innovation and transformation to the large and complex ecosystems.

Director, KB SmartSolutions

As a Director of KB SmartSolutions, Patrik is responsible for cooperation of the Bank with fin-techs. This includes funding and acceleration of external fintechs and development of internal start-ups. KB SmartSolutions‘ mission is to help the Bank and fintechs build financial services of the future. Before KB, Patrik was a co-founder and a Board member of a successful start-up insurance company Direct. Before that, he worked at various senior positions within the financial sector and consulting.

Head of Innovation Management

As a Head of Innovation Management, Monika is responsible for nurturing the innovation ecosystem in Komercni banka. She manages KB Innovation Lab, which is helping the tribe leaders within new agile organization with successful changes, faster and better innovations exploration and discovering new sources of revenue, costs savings and NPS drivers. All that via providing innovation as a service, including offering of the ecosystem of the testing with clients and cooperation with startups and universities. Before she worked as a HR consultant and financial analyst, starting her career in KB in 2002 already.

Director of Retail Banking at the FCA

The FCA’s policy director has said that the regulator will not “force individuals to save their own money” as it lines up a new joint pensions strategy with The Pensions Regulator. Speaking at a seminar outlining the FCA’s approach to the new strategy, for which it is currently seeking industry feedback, David Geale said that the regulator is unlikely to ask for sweeping new powers or intervene heavily in the pension arena, acknowledging that some consumers cannot be prevented from making bad decisions. In a video of the speech released by the FCA yesterday, Geale says: “We cannot remove all risk of harm to consumers. This isn’t a perfect world. Macroeconomic conditions will affect investment performance, and that will affect people’s income in retirement. Some consumers will continue to prioritise cash today rather than saving for tomorrow and longer-term security.

“We need to recognise that some risk in pensions is actually a good thing if you want to try to achieve the returns that may be possible. When we look at things like investment risk, it may be just as risky to have no investment risk.

“Our final strategy will not necessarily contain a big list of new interventions…We may also not be able to deliver what you want us to deliver, it may not be within our power to do everything you would like us to do.

“As regulators we cannot force individuals to save more of their own money…but we can ensure they understand the implications of what they do save and what they don’t save.”

Geale added that while it was still “early days” on the effect of the freedoms, FCA stats had shown significant increases in drawdown sales and individuals opting to take cash payments out of their pension. However, he said that hybrid products had not come onto the market as rapidly as the FCA predicted.

“With our competition hat on, we have yet to see the full range of innovation we may have expected in terms of product development. The innovation we have seen has been around tools to help people, which is a good thing, but perhaps we were expecting a little bit more around product as well, thinking about combinations of flexibility and guarantees for mass market consumers.”

Senior Advisor, Czech Banking Association

Mr. Hládek spent (with a short intermission in the beginning of 90’s) almost 30 years in the central bank of the country where he acted in different managerial positions. As the Executive Director of the Cash and Payment Systems Department, he was responsible for the cash issuance, cash protection, and circulation as well as for the policy, developments, and operations of different back-bone IT and payment systems. Later he acted as an advisor to the Governor of the Czech National Bank. In 2013 he moved to the Czech Banking Association where he acts as the Senior Executive Manager responsible for the management of its Payment Systems Commission, cybersecurity issues and different IT projects. Mr. Hládek has been serving as an external advisor to the International Monetary Fund, especially in the area of payment systems assessments and technical missions. Since 2014 he is a member of the Board of the European Payments Council since 2016 he takes part in activities of the Payment Systems Market Expert Group, an advisory body to the European Commission in the area of payment systems. He is also active as a lecturer at different universities.

Elie Beyrouthy is the Vice President, European Government Affairs

Elie Beyrouthy is Vice President of European Government Affairs at American Express since June 2017 where he leads the company’s engagement with European Union Institutions and advises senior leaders on EU regulatory and public policy matters. Elie also represents American Express’ interests in several EU trade bodies and professional associations. Prior to joining American Express, Elie was Director of International Regulatory Affairs at Western Union for 5 years. From 2007 to 2012, Elie held leadership positions at the World Savings Banks Institute and the European Banking Federation. Elie began his career as an intern at the European Commission and the United States Federal District Court of Minnesota. He holds two Masters Degrees in Law from the University of Minnesota and from the Jean Moulin University in Lyon – France. Elie also holds a diploma from the Institut d’Etudes Politiques de Lyon – France

Managing Partner | CORE SE

Fabian Meyer is Managing Partner in Zurich and Member of the Board of CORE SE in Berlin – an international technology ThinkTank.

Within CORE he is responsible for COREconsulting as well as for CORE ventures. There he manages projects to implement complex technology-based projects in the financial sector. A special focus of his work lays on mergers & acquisitions, payments as well as transaction banking. He completed his studies in the United States, South Korea and Japan with a master’s degree in Mannheim, and gained experience as a founder prior to that