ECONOMIC CRIME CONGRESS 2024

Ben Donaldson OBE is our Managing Director for Economic Crime. His teams work on behalf of our members across fraud, financial crime, sanctions, and export controls. The UK Finance Economic Crime team provides traditional trade association services to our members, but also a range of operational services. The blend of the services we provide enables us to work in collaboration with our members, other sectors, government, regulators and law enforcement to protect society and the economy by reducing economic crime. 

Prior to joining UK Finance, Ben spent 23 years working for the UK Government in Defence and Foreign Affairs. In 2015, he was awarded an OBE for services to Defence.

The Rt Hon the Baroness Morgan of Cotes (Nicky Morgan) is a former Conservative MP and Minister. She is now a member of the House of Lords and has a portfolio career with roles across the private and public sectors, including as a Non-Executive Director at Santander UK, the Financial Services Compensation Scheme, the Association of British Insurers, the Careers & Enterprise Company and is a Trustee of the Science Museum Group.

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.

Robin was appointed TSB's Chief Executive in April 2022.

He joined TSB in 2019, and as Chief Customer Officer was at the heart of transforming the TSB customer experience. He has driven the bank’s customer proposition and distribution strategies as well as developing the bank’s support for business customers. In 2020, he led the TSB brand relaunch.

Robin has broad industry expertise across consumer banking, business banking and insurance with a strong reputation for delivering business and cultural transformation in a banking career that spans over four decades.

Before joining TSB, Robin was Managing Director for Community Banking at Lloyds Bank and Bank of Scotland prior to which he led Lloyds Banking Group’s general insurance division. Prior to this he worked for RBS Group (now NatWest Group), holding senior roles including Managing Director at RBS and NatWest Branch Banking and Chief Executive of Tesco Personal Finance (now Tesco Bank).

Robin sits on the Board of UK Finance. He is also a Fellow of the Chartered Banker Institute, having previously served on their Board and the Board of Scottish Financial Enterprise.

Sarah is Managing Director of Corporate Affairs and Strategic Policy and is responsible for the overall strategy and delivery of UK Finance’s external activity including press and campaigns, UK and international advocacy, regulatory policy, sustainability policy, content, design and marketing.

Prior to joining UK Finance, Sarah was Director of Media Relations at London Stock Exchange Group and has worked across a range of corporate affairs and policy disciplines at the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), the Bank of England, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and the Association of British Insurers. She also worked as press secretary to Andrew Bailey as Deputy Governor of the Bank of England, acting as his Special Adviser when he then became the FCA’s Chief Executive.

Sarah is also a trustee of the Royal Institute of British Architects.

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.

Hugh Hurley is CEO at Gumtree, the UK’s leading local trading platform dedicated to making ‘Good Finds’ happen. In his role, Hugh has taken Gumtree from a subsidiary of eBay to a fully standalone business focused on building a sustainable future with community and safety at its heart. Hugh’s previous experience includes managing the De Beers’ group second hand diamond jewellery business in the US and also scaling operations at Spotahome, the Spanish medium term rental business. In all these roles Hugh has been focused on driving trust – in both the platform and users, recognising this is a critical part of any successful marketplace.

Kate has worked in financial services for over 20 years. Through a number of diverse roles in marketing, product development, technology and payments, the common thread for Kate is the delivery of great end user journeys and solutions. Kate has a very strong focus on innovation, driven by consumer demand and global market movements. Kate actively works with Fintech companies and this has given her further insight into the types of problems that end users experience and how to go about providing relevant and meaningful solutions. Kate now leads the Business Development function at Pay.UK with the purpose to power payments, champion innovation and give the UK choice in how it pays.

Emad Aladhal is Director of the Specialist Directorate within the FCA which comprises six specialist areas: Technology, Resilience and Cyber, Financial Crime, Financial Resilience, Resolution Strategy, Operations and Client Assets, Resolution Execution and the Office for Professional Body Anti-Money Laundering Supervision. The specialists work with colleagues from across the FCA to bring their expertise to the supervision of over 50,000 FCA regulated firms and, with OPBAS, professional body supervisors that supervise thousands​ more professional firms.

Prior to re-joining the FCA in 2017, Emad was a Compliance Director at top tier investment bank as EMEA head of Compliance for Corporate Functions and Investment Bank & Private Bank Operations. He also has prior extensive experience as a regulatory consultant (EMEA and US), and initially trained and worked as an Aerospace Engineer.

Becky Holmes is the creator of and voice behind the popular Twitter account @deathtospinach. Having been on the receiving end of an annoying number of direct messages from online romance scammers, Becky started to enjoy wasting their time and then publicly ‘outing’ their accounts.

No other woman has had so many online romances – from Keanu Reeves to Brad Pitt to Prince William and she is a firm favourite with brave US peacekeeping soldiers and oil rig workers who desperately need iTunes vouchers or Amazon gift cards. Becky's book, Keanu Reeves Is Not In Love With You, looks at all aspects of romance fraud, from the heartbreaking to the hilarious, the academic to the anecdotal and discusses where we're going wrong when dealing with those affected. 

In January 2024 Katie joined The Children’s Society’s National Prevention Programme which drives improved collaboration and professional practice around child exploitation across England and Wales. As the Financial Exploitation Lead, Katie is responsible for guiding the programmes response to Financial Exploitation.

Katie has a background in youth work and creative industries but has spent the last 6 years working to support victims of child trafficking and exploitation both directly and indirectly in specialist exploitation services. Katie has worked extensively with both internally and internationally trafficked children and young people who have experienced child criminal exploitation and overlapping harms including child financial exploitation and child sexual abuse and exploitation.