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Imran is a Director in KPMG’s Payments Consulting practice with over 20 years’ experience in Payments and Banking. He has worked at several major banks, including HSBC, Citibank, Barclays, and Bank of America, managing payments and cash management products. Additionally, he has also worked at VocaLink where he was the Product Lead on the Faster Payments programme and live service in the UK, and subsequently the Product Lead for VocaLink’s Sepa clearing service. Imran is an active member of the Payments industry having sat on the Payments Council, Faster Payments and Bacs Boards, and a number of industry working groups. 

Izzi is a current PhD student at the University of Reading and a Junior Associate at Climate X, a climate risk data analytics company. In her PhD, her research focuses on projecting weather-driven power outages under future climate scenarios in the United States. At Climate X, she works on the Product team, using geospatial datasets to develop new insights for the Spectra online platform, including a business disruption model to estimate losses from climate-induced supply chain disruptions, and a vulnerability model to identify building attributes such as age, use, and type. She graduated from the University of Oklahoma with a BS in meteorology as well as an MBA. 

Sabih Behzad serves as the Head of Digital Assets & Currencies Transformation for the Corporate and Investment Bank. In this role, he oversees strategy and execution and seeks to develop and accelerate use cases within the bank. Key areas of focus include tokenisation of assets and money, DeFi and Metaverse. ​

He represents the bank in various industry bodies and forums. He is a member of the board of Taurus AG, a leading Swiss based digital assets company.​
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Sabih has been with Deutsche Bank for 14 years, working across the Technology and Operations, Investment Bank and Corporate Bank divisions. He has held a variety of roles including leading strategy, managing large change programmes and developing new businesses. ​

Prior to Deutsche Bank, Sabih worked within the M&A Corporate Finance division of Lehman Brothers in London and started his career in technology consulting with Lucent Technologies before moving on to Accenture. ​

He has implemented large scale technology projects and run development teams. He has a passion for technology and in particular, all things blockchain and DLT.​

Sabih holds a BEng. in Computer Systems Engineering from the University of Manchester and a MBA with a concentration in Finance from London Business School. ​

He is a Chartered Engineer and a member of the Institute of Engineering and Technology

A serial tech entrepreneur Ez’s journey has taken him from Software Developer to Co-Founder and CTO to Venture Capital. He now begins the next stage of his mission as CEO of CFIT the Centre for Finance, Innovation and Technology. An industry body backed by the UK Treasury and the City of London with a mission to unblock the barriers to growth for financial technology by bringing together the best minds from across the UK to drive better outcomes for consumers and SMEs.

Ez was previously Principal and CTO in Residence at Impact X Capital Partners LLP a venture fund focused on supporting underrepresented entrepreneurs.

He is the Co-Founder of Code Untapped, a digital skills accelerator that helps companies find innovative product solutions by giving them access to diverse and underrepresented technologists through their innovation labs events.

Ez is also a former Co-Founder  & founding CTO of Neyber a multi-award-winning Fintech firm focused on financial well-being.

Charles Damen brings more than 20 years of payments, mobile, and internet experience to his role of Chief Product Officer at Token.io, Europe's leading A2A Infrastructure powered by Open Banking. Charles also serves as Assembly Member of the European Payments Council (EPC), as board member of UK Finance's Payments Board, and chairs UK Finance's Open Banking Working Group. 

Prior to joining Token, Charles was the SVP Product Strategy at Worldpay, responsible for Real Time Payments and Open Banking. Previously, Charles founded and led Thunes' the global cross-border payments division. Prior to that Charles had executive roles at Badoo, Syniverse and co-founded the mobile messaging business Mobile365 (later sold to SAP). Charles holds a dual Bachelor Degree in European Business from the International School of Economics Rotterdam and Groupe Ecole Supérieure de Commerce (Bordeaux, France). 

Hannah is an indirect tax partner at KPMG, focusing on owner managed and privately owned businesses.  She joined KPMG as a partner in September 2015 and predominantly looks after the firms fintech and crypto-asset clients from an indirect tax perspective.  Prior to joining, Hannah was a director for 5 years in the indirect tax entrepreneurial team at PwC, and a latterly a partner for 7 years heading up the Mid-Cap indirect tax entrepreneurial team at Smith & Williamson LLP. ​

Whilst Hannah has 20+ years’ experience advising entrepreneurial businesses on indirect tax issues, her focus has always been working with fast growing businesses throughout their growth lifecycle, in particular dealing with the indirect tax issues of fintech businesses and more recently crypto businesses. Hannah co-leads KPMG fintech and crypto team across the UK, and co-leads KPMG’s crypto-currency interest group. Hannah sits on HMRC’s Indirect Tax Crypto Policy Working Group.

Simon has extensive experience in the Payments industry, with expertise in strategic change programmes, cash management sales, operations and product management.

In his current role as Head of Payments for NatWest Group, Simon is responsible for setting the Groups Payments strategy including, Product and Scheme management, Operations and Innovation.  

Previously the Head of Product Development & Innovation, Simon led the Payments customer centric Innovation programme together with product / scheme responsibilities.

Prior to this role Simon was Head of Design and Franchise Delivery leading teams to deliver transformational change to meet alternative State Aid remedies with the European Commission and Her Majesty’s Treasury following the decision to stand down the divestment of Williams & Glyn. 

Simon joined RBS in 1994 from HSBC where he held various leadership roles in Payments and Cash Management. 

Well known and respected at industry fora, Simon is chair of the Strategic Participant Group supporting Pay.UK and has recently taken up a position as an Advisory Board member of Pennies (pennies.org.uk).
 

John Edwards began his term as UK Information Commissioner in January 2022. 

John was educated in New Plymouth, New Zealand and achieved a Bachelor of Laws and Masters in Public Policy at the University of Wellington. 

He worked as a solicitor and barrister for more than 20 years, including time as a policy adviser to the New Zealand Prime Minister and Cabinet around Freedom of Information.] 

From February 2014 to December 2021 he was New Zealand Privacy Commissioner. During that time he chaired the International Conference of Data Protection and Privacy Commissioners (now known as the Global Privacy Assembly) and was a member of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) Informal Group of Experts on Children in the Digital Environment. 

Since taking office as UK Information Commissioner, John has set out his vision for the ICO to be a regulator that: empowers people to confidently share their information to use the services that drive the economy; empowers organisations to use information responsibly to innovate; and empowers people to hold government to account. He launched his strategic plan for the ICO in July 2022 after a listening tour of stakeholder views in his first few months. 

As well as taking robust enforcement action in areas such as nuisance calls and misuse of facial recognition technology, John has set out a revised approach to public sector enforcement and marked the first anniversary of the children’s code, clarifying its scope

Samantha joined Lloyds Banking Group (LBG) in 2021 and is responsible for leading the strategic direction on payments, including driving payments strategy, fostering payments partnerships and managing the Group’s external relationships across the payments industry and regulators. Samantha also delivers enterprise-wide services including; domestic and international payments settlement, liquidity and scheme management; payments design consultancy; and payments policy compliance.

Previously, Samantha held roles at the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), leading both payments supervision and the regulator’s globally recognised fintech agenda. Prior to this, Samantha held several senior positions at NatWest/RBS in Global Transaction Services (GTS) leading on digital innovation, strategy design, transformation, and regulatory change.

A constant theme throughout her career has been driving progress on inclusion, diversity and allyship. Samantha was appointed as a Director of Swift in 2022 and Deputy Chair in 2023. She also sits on the LBG Fintech Investment Board, acts in a shareholder/advisory capacity to fintechs, and is the LBG payments representative on several prominent industry groups.

In her career Kate Fitzgerald has led change and transformation in payments, banking, and operations. She specialises in leading large transformational programmes for end-to-end payments in financial services.

​​​Most recently, Kate worked as a senior advisor on payment systems at the PSR. Previously she worked in a variety of roles at Lloyds and led payment ​integrations for the merger with Halifax Bank of Scotland, and the Verde Divestment, ultimately becoming TSB's Payments Director. Kate has also served on the board of Payments UK.

Kate joined the PSR in June 2020.

John is the Head of Smart Data for the Department for Business and Trade. He leads the team responsible for the Smart Data clauses in the Data Protection and Digital Information Bill. His team are also supporting Smart Data policy development via a wider programme of work, including the Smart Data council and a challenge prize. Prior to working on Smart Data, John led on policies covering Health, Science and Innovation.  

Aron Gelbard co-founded Bloom & Wild in 2013, and over the last 10 years has built Bloom & Wild into Europe’s leading direct to consumer flower and gifting platform, delivering millions of bouquets, plants and other gifts every year. 

The Bloom & Wild Group operates in eight European markets with a family of three consumer brands, having acquired Netherlands based Bloomon and France based Bergamotte in 2021. 

Bloom & Wild differentiates itself through a direct-from-grower supply chain with meaningfully lower waste than industry norms and through the use of proprietary technology to deliver a better customer experience and a more scalable and sustainable operation.

The Group has been certified carbon neutral since 2020 and is a signatory of the UK's Tech Zero pledge.

Under Aron’s leadership, Bloom & Wild has raised over £100m in equity funding from investors including General Catalyst and Index Ventures.

Prior to Bloom & Wild, Aron worked in consulting at Bain & Company in London and Silicon Valley. He has an MA from Oxford University and an MBA from Harvard Business School. Aron is a trustee on the board of Fareshare, an active angel investor including in the fintech space, and a pledger to Founders Pledge.
 

Adam leads IBM’s Quantum business in the UK, Nordics, Benelux and Central/Eastern Europe. In this role, he is responsible for working with enterprise clients, helping them identify use cases and build their Quantum skills, as well as academia and government. He is an experienced technical architect and executive who has worked across multiple industries and specialises in simplifying complex technologies for business users. He has a BSc(Hons) in Computer Science and is a Fellow of the BCS.

Yvonne leads UK Finance’s policy work on how digital innovations like securities tokenisation are shaping the UK’s capital markets landscape.

Yvonne previously advised on how MiFID II and Brexit impacted trading operations within the UK and Europe.

Yvonne joined UK Finance in 2020 having worked both in industry and private practice as a senior counsel solicitor specialising in investment management and financial regulation.

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Charlotte Hogg is executive vice president and chief executive officer for Visa’s European operations. Charlotte has more than 30 years of experience in financial services, bank operations and management consulting.  

Prior to joining Visa, Charlotte served as chief operating officer for the Bank of England, from 2013 to 2017. Other relevant experience came as she led retail distribution for Santander in the UK, worked at Experian as the managing director of UK and Irish operations, was CEO of Goldfish Bank at Discover Financial Services and earlier in her career, Charlotte was a managing director for strategy and planning at Morgan Stanley, and a management consultant at McKinsey & Company, based in the U.S.  

Charlotte graduated from the University of Oxford with a B.A. in Economics and History. She is a Kennedy Memorial Trust Scholar from Harvard University and has an honorary Doctor of Laws from Warwick University.

Currently, Charlotte is on the Board of Philharmonia and is a Non-Executive Director for RELX plc. She has previously served on the boards of First Story and Now Teach; both charities in the education sector, she was also a delegate to the Finance Committee of Oxford University Press and a former governor of Nottingham Trent University.  

Chris is a passionate advocate for the potential of technology and the benefits of diversity and inclusion.

He is a member of the influential House of Lords Select Committee on Science and Technology and has previously co-authored House of Lords Select Committee Reports on: Democracy and Digital Technologies, Artificial Intelligence, Financial Exclusion, Social Mobility, and Digital Skills.

In 2017 he published a report; “Distributed Ledger Technologies for Public Good: leadership, collaboration and innovation” calling on the Government to look at the challenges and opportunities of this technology for improving public services. He was a member of the Special Public Bill Committee for the Electronic Trade Documents Act, which came into force last month (Sept 23) and which Chris has described both as “the most important law you’ve never heard of” and “the blockchain law that doesn’t mention blockchain”.

An ex-Paralympic swimmer, Chris won nine gold, five silvers and one bronze medal across four Games, including a record haul of six golds at Barcelona 1992.

Paul Horlock is currently the Chief Payments Officer of Santander UK and is responsible for creating a single UK Payments team operating in all payment lines across the business and working alongside the European region as part of the One Europe approach. He is also engaging with the development of the global Payments strategy for the Santander group and with the evolution of PagoNxt.

Paul brings 20 years’ experience in the payments sector to Santander UK. His most recent position was as Chief Executive of Pay.UK, which he joined at their inception in October 2017 to bring together Faster Payments, Bacs and Cheques into a new UK Domestic scheme serving the UK retail and commercial banking market and delivering key market innovations such as Confirmation of Payee. Prior to this, Paul held senior positions at Nationwide as Director Payments; leading work in the Payments Strategy Forum and Open Banking and formerly at Barclays as Head of Global Payment Processing.

Alison Hutchinson CBE is the CEO of Pennies, an award-winning fintech charity making digital giving affordable, sustainable, and feel-good. She is also a Senior Independent Director at DFS plc, Yorkshire Building Society and Foresight Group Holdings Ltd.  Alison was previously a Trustee of the Charities Aid Foundation, Non-Executive Director of Aviva Life Holdings UK and AIL (General & Health Insurance), subsidiary boards of Aviva Group plc, LV=, and of LMAX Exchange. In 2016, Alison was awarded a CBE for services to the economy and charities. She also has a wealth of experience in the technology and finance sector, across a variety of directorial positions.  
 

Marion is a highly accomplished business leader with an exemplary track record of driving growth through innovation, change and superlative people leadership.  Marion is Chair and Trustee of the Open Banking Implementation Entity, where her key priorities are maintaining the existing implementation of open banking, as well as working with the Joint Regulatory Oversight Committee (JROC) to decide the future direction of open banking in the UK.

Marion also fulfils a non-executive director portfolio, contributing to the growth and advancement of financial services companies.

Marion was Director of Payments, NatWest (2015-2022), responsible for setting the Payments strategy and prior to joining NatWest, she was President of MasterCard UK & Ireland developing a world beyond cash through an innovative approach to everyday Payments.

Before joining MasterCard, Marion was CEO of VocaLink, where during her tenure the Faster Payments Service was launched and Voca and Link were merged.

Having started with PEXA in 2011, Krystle worked with the Australian property industry to design and implement the platform that has transformed the entire industry and revolutionised the way property settles.  Now in the UK, Krystle brings this wealth of experience and learnings to deliver a transformational property completions platform for the UK market.  With responsibility for defining and designing the platform, she works closely with UK lenders, lawyers, Land Registries, the Bank of England and other leading organisations to ensure we are building the right platform for the industry.  Krystle has over 17 years' experience in product and digital transformation, both for the property technology and financial institution industries in Australia and the UK, including at Accenture, Westpac, ANZ and Lloyds Banking Group.

Scott is the Head of Markets DLT and is responsible for the strategy and execution of new trading products built on DLT/Blockchain. Additionally, he is responsible for representing JP Morgan on industry initiatives and wider market developments related to DLT.

Scott joined JP Morgan in 2010 and has spend most of his time in Treasury/Chief Investment Office and the Corporate and Investment Bank. He also serves on the board of HQLAx and Ownera, and is a Trustee of Global H20 (UK), a charity focused on providing clean water in Uganda.  

Prior to joining J.P. Morgan, Scott served as an Infantry Officer for 13 years in the Australian then British Army, including tours of East Timor, Northern Ireland and Iraq.

Scott holds an MBA from Cambridge University and a BA from Deakin University. 

Experienced executive with a particular focus on competition and regulatory policy, having worked across a number of public and private sectors in several markets. Influence payments regulation across the UK and Europe, leading discussions on strategic industry and regulatory policy initiatives. Has commercial credentials delivering and implementing these policies in practice. Skilled at relationship building, hold several board positions and work with a number of charities.

Holly is a senior Generative AI expert within the Data & Technology Transformation arm of IBM Consulting, a leading AI & Hybrid Cloud consulting firm. With a background in digital strategy and CX transformation programmes, Holly now specialises in leveraging AI to enhance customer and employee experience. She has a particular focus on generative AI and conversational banking for Financial Services organisations.

In her role, Holly works closely with large banks, insurers and building societies to guide them through the opportunities that exist in AI, ensuring: the right use cases are selected for experimentation, that scale is considered early and that technical trade-offs in model selection are understood.

Before joining IBM, Holly led the Financial Services market vertical within the consulting arm of Capita Experience, defining the industry strategy whilst ensuring digital transformation and AI enablement programmes had CX & EX embedded at the core. Holly holds a BBusMan in Sustainability and a Master of Innovation and Technology Management from the University of Queensland.

Ben Ussher-Stanley serves as the Head of Business Development - EMEA at nCino, the worldwide leader in cloud banking. He is responsible for spearheading business development initiatives in the EMEA region, identifying new opportunities for growth, and fostering key collaborations with financial institutions and industry partners. 
 
Prior to joining nCino, Ben worked at Lloyds Banking Group, where he led the Large Corporate Credit Support Team tasked with maintaining and amending complex facilities for large corporate clients of the Bank. Ben is a graduate of the University of Essex with a LLB (Hons) in Law. 

Phillip is Director for Digital Technology and Innovation at UK Finance.  

He has a particular focus on how legislative and regulatory policy impacts digital transformation in finance and banking. He works across the digital transformation landscape on digital identity, AI, new digital money, tokenisation, open banking and data protection.  

His previous role focussed on influencing payments strategy and regulation in the UK. Phillip has a public policy background with previous roles at HM Treasury and in local government.

He currently sits on the FCA Innovation Advisory Group and Smart Data Council.

Tom is the Director responsible for Central Bank Digital Currency at the Bank of England. He took on this position when it was established in January 2021.

His previous roles at the Bank include Director of Fintech, Head of International Policy & Strategy, Head of Division in Prudential Policy and time as a Senior Manager responsible for the supervision of major international firms. He was educated at the London School of Economics.

John is the Conservative MP for Weston-super-Mare. He has held a variety of posts since he was first elected in 2005 including PPS to Oliver Letwin and Shadow Business Minister. In Government John was a Minister of State in the Northern Ireland Office, Constitution Minister in the Cabinet Office, Lord Commissioner and Assistant Whip in the Treasury and Tourism & Heritage Minister in the Department for Culture, Media and Sport. John was also the Prime Minister’s longest-serving Anti-Corruption Champion (2017-2022). Prior to entering politics, John had an extensive business career, which included roles at JP Morgan, McKinsey, Thompson and Pearson PLC. John also helped found Credit Market Analysis (publishing credit data for financial firms). John chairs the Conservative Policy Forum.

David has worked in financial services for over 40 years. At Barclays he worked for three Group chairmen, helped set up Large Corporate Banking, had wide experience in SME and consumer banking and ran the Group’s IT and operations function. David subsequently led Commercial Banking for Lloyds Bank, then was chief executive of Cattles PLC (a consumer finance and invoice finance business) before joining Moneycorp (an independent FX provider) as CEO. Before joining UK Finance David spent eight years at Bibby Financial Services as the chief executive.

Ciaran is Founder and Managing Director of Card Industry Professionals (CIP), an Independent Sales Organisation (ISO) that support thousands of businesses throughout the UK to provide the latest payments technology in-store and online. CIP process millions of transactions per month, have surpassed £1Billion in digital payments to date and are ranked #1 in the UK on Trustpilot for ‘Card Processing Service’. 

Ciaran’s role oversees strategic partnerships with global payment providers such as Zettle by PayPal and Worldpay by FIS, identifying new products and key projects to compliment the growth strategy, whilst supporting the improvement and implementation of internal business processes.  He was also listed in the Forbes ‘30under30’ list in 2021 for Finance and is a finalist for ‘Scale-Up Entrepreneur of the Year’ at the Great British Entrepreneur Awards (GBEA) this November. 
 

Francesco Simoneschi is the Co-Founder and CEO at TrueLayer. He is a technologist and serial entrepreneur who has founded and grown a number of successful tech companies in the US and Europe, including analytics platform Staq.io which was acquired by Playhaven, and mobile marketing platform Upsight. Francesco has a degree in Information Management and Economics from the London School of Economics, and a degree in Computer Engineering from La Sapienza University in Rome.

John has been Metro Bank’s Chief Technology Officer and Chief Data Officer since October 2022.  His current areas of focus are modernisation of the bank’s infrastructure, improving technology agility and building a data products capability. He joined Metro in 2019 as the bank’s first Chief Information Security Officer, building up the security strategy, governance and operations teams, creating a Security Operations Centre and introducing security-by-design into the product lifecycle. He also played a key role in migrating the bank’s digital channels to public cloud.

Prior to Metro Bank, John spent 20 years in consulting, specialising in the architecture, security and operational resilience of critical infrastructure. He led the cyber technical consulting team at PA Consulting and previously ran his own business providing payments security solutions. He has also worked in the software and telecoms industries, but always with a focus on the financial services market.

Outside work, John’s hobbies include sailing, old cars, food, wine and travel.

Dave Smallwood is a sales and partnerships expert with experience from American Express, PayPal and more recently his own startup. While at PayPal, Dave led sales and commercial partnership teams that scaled PayPal’s adoption in the UK and around Europe.  

His passion lies in the opportunities that technologies create to enable disruption.  Dave’s work has been highlighted by The Guardian, The Times, Trendhunter, Trendhunter and others. Dave holds a MBA from London Business School.

Gavin has created over a dozen companies, employing 100’s of people, and delivering $100M’s in measurable impact. He co-chaired the development of the Open Banking Standard, was founding CEO of the Open Data Institute, and has raised over $100M in venture and philanthropic funding. He has mentored, chaired, or been a non-exec of over 30 organisations across sectors.

Ian Stuart has been Group Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of HSBC UK Bank plc since April 2017.  One of the UK’s largest banks, HSBC UK serves over 14 million retail, commercial and private banking customers, supported by 23,500 colleagues. In addition to the HSBC UK brand, it also includes HSBC Private Bank (UK), M&S Bank, first direct and HSBC Innovation Banking (UK). As CEO of HSBC UK, Ian is also a member of the HSBC Holdings plc Group Executive Committee.  

Ian has worked in financial services for over four decades. He joined HSBC as Group General Manager and Head of Commercial Banking Europe in 2014, having previously led the corporate and business banking businesses at Barclays and worked at NatWest/RBS for over 20 years. He started his career at Bank of Scotland in 1979.

Ian was awarded a Freedom of the City of London for his services to finance, received an Honorary Masters Degree from The London Institute of Banking and Finance (LIBF), is the global Executive Sponsor of HSBC’s Ability Employee Network and a member of the UK Finance Board.  He is also a Business Ambassador for Meningitis Now. 
 

Sims is the Climate Action Lead at Google DeepMind Institute, where she works with teams of Researchers and Engineers on the application of AI to solve challenges that contribute to climate change. She has spent 11 years building technologies for social good and was a founding member of Google's Crisis Response team. Sims is also the co-founder of the Centre for AI and Climate (CAIC), an international organisation based out of London that connects technology, policy and business to accelerate the world's transition to net zero. She holds an MSc with Distinction from University College London and a BA with Honours from University of Pennsylvania.