Digital Innovation Summit 2026 - Vision into Action

Alex Dunn is a payments and financial services leader with 15 years’ experience across global payments, central banking and government. He is currently Director for Global Strategic Growth at Visa, where he leads strategic initiatives to expand the Visa Direct network, develop new use cases, and build partnerships across the payments and market infrastructure ecosystem. His role includes engagement with leading financial institutions, market infrastructures and central banks, including representation on international initiatives such as BIS Project Agorá. Previously, Alex spent 7.5 years at the Bank of England, working across prudential supervision, parliamentary affairs and enterprise risk. As Chief of Staff to the Executive Director for Risk, he supported executive‑level governance and steered risk leadership through the Covid‑19 crisis. Alex began his career working for Parliamentarians in Westminster and Brussels.  He holds a BA from Hull, and MSc from the LSE, and an Executive MBA from Exeter.

Austin leads NatWest’s regulatory engagement on digital asset. Working across projects delivering tokenised deposits nationally and internationally and engaging across the UK’s regulatory community to help shape the future regulatory landscape for stablecoins and cryptoassets.

She started her career in consulting and private equity at McKinsey & Co. and Bridgepoint Capital and holds a PhD in Banking and Finance from the University of Rome, MBA (Hons) from Columbia University, Diploma from Harvard Kennedy School of Government. Francesca was nominated a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum in 2014.

Jane is Head of Department in Payments & Digital Assets at the FCA, working on crypto and payments policy. Jane came to Payments & Digital Assets from Resolution, covering the insolvency of FCA regulated firms. Previously Jane concentred on Client Assets, and has a background as a corporate lawyer. 

Joanna is Chief Executive of Independent Age, a national charity providing support for older people facing financial hardship.

The charity offers free and impartial advice and information, and grants for community organisations. It also works with Parliamentarians and other key stakeholders to make sure older people facing financial hardship have sufficient income and receive the financial support they’re entitled to, are protected from unfair or avoidable costs, have the connections and support they need in their communities, and live in safe, secure and suitable housing with the care and support they need. 

Previously, Joanna was CEO of Money Advice Trust, the charity running National Debtline and Business Debtline, whose vision is to help people across the UK to tackle their debts and manage their money with confidence. Joanna is a director of the financial services trade association UK Finance, representing vulnerable consumers, and Chair of the Advisory Board at Birmingham University’s Centre on Household Assets and Savings Management. 

She lives in North London with her husband, Simon Horne, who is a Headteacher, and their three daughters. In her spare time she reads, sings, cycles and climbs Munros.

Lee leads Payment and Digital Asset Strategy and delivery for NatWest Group. Defining / aligning the strategy and direction of the Group’s payment and Digital Asset capabilities across the different franchises and functions.

A broad role that focusses on all key market drivers - from customer needs and competitive threat to technology developments and the regulatory and market landscape.

Lee leads NatWest’s participation in key domestic and international payment and digital asset initiatives such as RLN / GBTD, project Agora and the Swift Digital Concept.

Lee has led fintech investment and sits as a board observer for Icon Solutions. He also sits on the Payments Association Advisory Board and chairs the UK finance CBDC working group.

Lee joined NatWest in 2018 after 13 years at the Co-operative Bank where he held senior leadership roles within product and payments. Looking after product / P&L, risk and strategy setting.  Latterly owning the payment strategy together with responsibility for regulatory change and key payment scheme relationships.

Married with a daughter and son, Lee is a keen footballer and captains his local side. He is an ardent supporter of Liverpool FC and has followed them all over Europe.

Lisa Scott is the Chief Strategy Officer at TrueLayer, responsible for delivering the company's long-term vision. With over 25 years in global financial services, she has deep expertise in driving growth and product commercialisation across open banking, digital wallets, and cards. Lisa has held senior leadership positions at PayPal, Lloyds Banking Group, and was previously regional CEO at Banked. She recently joined the new Retail Payments Infrastructure Board with the Bank of England.

Nick is Chief Executive Officer of Select ID, a new inclusive Reusable ID acceptance network. Select ID allows consumers to choose their preferred Reusable ID provider while making it easy for companies to benefit from digital identity services that meet relevant regulatory requirements such as KYC and AML.

Nick has expert knowledge of Identity and Fraud techniques, solutions, and standards across a wide variety of sectors and jurisdictions. Previously, Nick was Chief Identity Strategist at the Open Identity Exchange, providing thought leadership, guides, presentations and stakeholder influencing to drive forward the definition and adoption of Digital ID and Digital Wallets around the globe. Prior to that, Nick was Director of ID and Fraud at Experian, where led Experian’s development, launch and operation of a full “Identity as a Service” solution which was the first live example of a Digital ID being seamlessly interoperable across public and private sector. 

Ryan is based in London and heads up Digital Assets globally at Barclays. Ryan setup the DA team in 2024, which is responsible for digital asset strategy, governance and the establishment of new asset, money and tokenisation initiatives across the bank. Prior to that, Ryan was one of the founding team members of the Barclays Principal Investments team in 2018 and led Barclays Strategic Investment activities across Europe and Asia.

Ryan joined Barclays in 2011 as an M&A advisor in the investment bank and moved to the Strategy and Corporate Development team in 2013, where he acted as a principal in originating and executing M&A transactions.

Prior to Barclays, Ryan was at Nevsky Capital, a $7bn long/short equity asset manager, where he covered a range of sectors including oil & gas, chemicals and agriculture and before that worked at Deutsche Bank as a corporate finance advisor in the Industrials practice across Europe.

Ryan holds a BA in Politics, Philosophy and Economics from the University of Oxford and an MA (Oxon) from the University of Oxford.

Sam is Head of International Public Policy at Stripe, the financial infrastructure platform for businesses. Millions of companies — from the world’s largest enterprises to the most ambitious startups — use Stripe to accept payments, grow their revenue, and accelerate new business opportunities. Sam leads a team of policy professionals across Europe, the Middle East and Africa, and the Asia-Pacific Region, who work to ensure that the needs of the online economy are reflected in public policy developments. He is a policy professional with 25 years experience across the financial services and retail sectors. Prior to joining Stripe in 2019, he held senior roles at one of Europe’s largest banks and an Asia-based investment bank. Sam is a member of the Payments Board of UK Finance, the Industry Advisory Council of pay.uk, and the Financial Stability Board’s Legal, Regulatory & Supervisory Taskforce.

Adam Avards joined UK Finance in 2022 as Principal for Cyber and Third Party Risk. He leads UK Finance’s engagement on Critical Third Party regulatory issues and chairs a number of industry forums and committees on Cyber Security, Cloud and Risk. Before joining UK Finance, Adam spent over 15 years within the UK’s Intelligence Community where he focused on security policy implementation and training.

Aysha leads the team’s work on government loan schemes, economic crime, restructuring and insolvency, and innovation. Her work spans Commercial and Invoice Finance/Asset Based Lending and she also works closely with other policy areas across UK Finance. A lawyer by background, Aysha has particular expertise and focus on all legal issues impacting business banking and finance.  

Prior to joining the Commercial Finance team, Aysha was interim General Counsel at UK Finance, where she was heavily involved in the set-up of the Covid-19 emergency loan schemes as well as advising on UK Finance’s response to the pandemic, several major industry-wide and internal projects, and key policy and operational matters.  Before joining UK Finance, Aysha spent over 15 years in private practice and in-house as a competition/commercial lawyer.

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.

Jana is the Managing Director for Payments, Innovation and Resilience at UK Finance where she leads discussions on payments, fintech and digital agendas.

Before joining UK Finance, she was head of the Worldpay (then FIS) Global Government Affairs team, shaped competition and regulatory policies at the Financial Conduct Authority and Payments Systems Regulator and prior to that supported companies across public and private sectors globally through her various roles.

She has added commercial credentials delivering and implementing policies in practice, holds several board positions and works with a number of charities.

Rhiannon joined UK Finance’s predecessor in 2010. Rhiannon leads work on topics such as CBDC, stablecoins and cryptoassets, and provides thought leadership on policy issues in payments and cash more generally. She has previously led work on Open Banking, SEPA, government engagement as a user of the payment systems, digital ID, and card payments.

Prior to joining UK Finance, Rhiannon completed an MPhil at Cambridge.

Yvonne Deane Harte acts as UK Finance’s Director for Secondary Markets and Post Trade processes. Prior to joining UK Finance in 2020, Yvonne served as senior counsel within the investment management wing of the Aviva plc group and has forged a career (beginning as a private practice solicitor) advising clients on investment management and financial regulation.