Economic Crime Congress 2026 - Leading the Collective Response to a Global Threat

Ben Trim is Head of Group Financial Crime Public Policy at HSBC. Ben is a financial crime public policy specialist and leads a team who work with governments and international bodies to improve the tackling of economic crime and the management of financial crime risk. In the UK, Ben has worked closely with industry partners and the Government to development a closer partnership to meet these objectives. Ben is the chair of the UK Finance Money Laundering Advisory Panel, and a member of the UK Government's Public Private Steering Group - so has a deep understanding of the UK's Economic Crime Plan. Ben also chairs the Wolfsberg Group's Policy Consultations Working Group, and was previously a member of the APP Scams Steering Group.

Prior to HSBC, Ben spent over 12 years working in the centre of the UK Government. His last post was as Deputy Director for Foreign Policy in the National Security Secretariat. In this role, Ben provided strategic guidance to the Foreign Policy Team; delivering the Prime Minister's and National Security Council's (NSC) priorities. He also led work to embed and develop the NSC policies on prosperity and global growth. Ben's previous roles in Government include Head of the Ebola Unit within the NSS, and positions in the Foreign Office (leading counter-terrorism strategy) and the Prime Minister's Office (Prime Minister's Questions).

Ben holds a Masters in International Strategy and Diplomacy from the London School of Economics for which he was awarded a distinction. Ben is also married with two sons.

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.

Donald is the Head of Financial Crime Threat Mitigation for NatWest Group.  Prior to joining the bank in 2019, he was a civil servant for almost 30 years, spending most of that time with HMRC, where his last role was as  Director, Criminal Investigation.  From 2014 to 2019, Donald was the Director Economic Crime at the National Crime Agency, where one of his achievement was the establishment of the Joint Money laundering Intelligence Team – a public/private partnership between Law Enforcement, the FCA and banking to improve the effectiveness of the UK response to financial crime.”

Gareth is Monzo's Head of Financial Crime and Fraud Risk, responsible for Monzo's global systems and controls to prevent and detect money laundering, terrorist financing, sanctions evasion, bribery and corruption, and Fraud. Gareth has been at Monzo for six years and previously held senior Financial Crime roles at Nationwide Building Society. Gareth is the Deputy Chair of the Banking SARs Working Group, driving improvements in the industry's SARs regime. 

Giles Thomson is the Director of Economic Crime and Sanctions at HM Treasury. He is responsible for the UK’s anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist financing policy and leads OFSI – the UK’s competent authority for the implementation and enforcement of financial sanctions. He has over twenty years' experience in a range of roles across government, working extensively on economic crime policy before joining OFSI in November 2020. 

Giles is also the Vice-President of the Financial Action Taskforce (FATF) after having served as UK's Head of Delegation to FATF and co-chair of FATF's Global Network and Coordination Group for several years. 

Hannah Gurga is Director General of the ABI, where she leads the insurance and long-term savings sector’s engagement with government, regulators, parliamentarians, and stakeholders. She is responsible for overseeing the ABI’s strategic direction and driving its member priorities, focusing on customer outcomes, investing in people and the planet and supporting an effective market.  

Hannah also serves on the Board of TheCityUK. She is a member of the Executive Committee of Insurance Europe, as well as the UK government’s Financial Inclusion Committee and Joint Fraud Taskforce.

With nearly 20 years of experience in financial services across public and private sectors, Hannah has previously held senior roles at the London Stock Exchange Group, LCH, and ICAP. She began her career in the civil service, serving in a number of government departments including HM Treasury and the Cabinet Office.

Kathryn Westmore is Director of Financial Crime at UK Finance, working with government, regulators, law enforcement and the financial services industry to develop practical and effective responses to money laundering, illicit finance and wider economic crime issues.

Prior to joining UK Finance, Kathryn led the Financial Crime Policy Programme at RUSI, where her work focused on emerging financial crime threats and the design and implementation of effective policy and regulatory responses. During this time, she served as Specialist Adviser to two Parliamentary inquiries and contributed to national and international policy discussions on economic crime and illicit finance.

Earlier in her career, Kathryn spent 15 years at PwC advising financial institutions on financial crime risk and regulatory change.

Marius Bischoff is a Manager in the Payments and Innovation team at UK Finance, covering digital identity, supporting the UK Finance Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) working group, the Regulated Liabilities Network (RLN) project, and UK Finance’s work on industry standards. His role involves close collaboration with senior stakeholders across the banking sector to enhance customer outcomes.

With a background in stakeholder engagement, policy formulation, and external relations, Marius has previously worked in consulting, where he advised on strategic engagements and business transformation within the financial and public sectors. He also has significant experience working for NGOs in both Brussels and London, helping to shape regulatory strategies and stakeholder engagement efforts.

Mark joined the FCA (then FSA) in 2009 with a focus on unauthorised business investigations and became Head of the Unauthorised Business Department in 2013. Mark led some of UBD’s largest cases, dealing with unauthorised investment schemes. Mark moved to Wholesale Enforcement in 2016 and worked on a range of enforcement investigations including market abuse and misconduct in wholesale firms, before becoming Director of Wholesale and Unauthorised Business Investigations in 2018. In November 2024, Mark became Director of Wholesale – Sell Side, then became Director of Specialists in October 2025. The Specialists directorate covers areas including financial crime policy and supervision, prudential regulation of firms and client asset rules.

Mark is a qualified accountant and previously spent 12 years at BDO LLP. During Mark’s career in practice, he specialised in forensic financial investigations, providing investigative and asset management expertise to a range of public and private sector clients.

Nathaniel Gleicher is Meta’s global head of security policy and counter-fraud. He is an engineer and a lawyer, and leads strategy at Meta to track and counter determined adversaries that seek to cause serious harms across the internet, including election manipulation, government surveillance, cybercrime, and fraud and scams.

Niall is the Group Director of Economic Crime Prevention for Lloyds Banking Group. He is responsible for all aspects of Fraud and Financial Crime across the group. Niall brings experience across a range of firms and roles in the financial services industry covering Banking, Hedge Funds, Mass Market Financial Advice and Management Consulting in the first and second lines of defence. Niall joined from Barclays where as Managing Director for Compliance Risk Frameworks he was responsible for the global framework design for Financial Crime and Conduct. During his 10 years at Barclays, Niall also held a number of senior leadership roles within the second line Financial Crime programme with responsibility for AML, Sanctions and ABC.

Nicola has extensive experience in Economic Crime in the banking sector. Her academic background is in law, having studied in Scotland before becoming a New York Attorney. She has held Economic Crime focused roles in banks in the UK and USA and has been the Nominated Officer at two major UK banks.

Nicola held a position on the Law Society of Scotland’s AML Committee, assessing Solicitors compliance with money laundering regulation as well as positions as Deputy Chair and Chair of the banking industry SARs group, attended by major UK banks and the NCA for over 5 years.

Nigel is the Head of the Group Financial Intelligence Unit (GFIU) at Lloyds Banking Group and interim Nominated Officer.  He was formerly the Deputy Director for the Economic Crime Command in the National Crime Agency (NCA).

At Lloyd’s, Nigel works in Economic Crime Prevention and leads intelligence and investigation teams responsible for identifying and mitigating the threats from criminals and terrorists.  The FIU works in partnership across the industry and with Law Enforcement to protect customers, communities and the UK from Economic Crime risks.   Nigel leads on information sharing and is member of the UK Finance Intelligence and Information (I&I) Committee and a member of the UK’s Public Private Operating Board (PPOB).   

Whilst Deputy Director at the NCA, Nigel established the National Economic Crime Centre (NECC).  He also led the UK’s Financial Intelligence Unit (UKFIU); Criminal and Civil Investigation teams; Threat Response and Policy/Strategy units.   Nigel pioneered the creation of the UK’s International Corruption Unit (ICU) and the UK’s Joint Money Laundering Intelligence Taskforce (JMLIT) and is an international advocate for Public Private Partnerships.   He is a fellow of the International Compliance Association (ICA) and holds a post-graduate Diploma in Financial Crime Compliance.

Rachael Herbert has been the Director of the National Economic Crime Centre in the UK’s National Crime Agency since May 2025. She is also responsible for the UK Financial Intelligence Unit (UKFIU).  Her remit is to translate the threat understanding for illicit finance and fraud, into strategic and operational priorities for the UK’s response to economic crime.  She does this in partnership with law enforcement, the private sectors, regulators, legislators and policy makers.  She is passionate about harnessing the intelligence from all parts of the system, and finding shared objectives to amplify collective impact on economic crime.  She has worked in economic crime in the NCA for ten years, having previously worked across UK Government in multiple roles.

Sarah Travers is the RBC Head of AML Advisory for Capital Markets Europe, Investor Services UK and Global Asset Management UK. Sarah has over 20 years’ experience in financial crime, including roles within law enforcement and the private sector, including roles at Barclays, Deutsche Bank, Credit Suisse, Macquarie and BAML. Sarah has also worked with the IMF on technical assistance missions and FATF assisting with drafting the Guidance on the Risk-Based Approach for Casinos. 

Steve Rodhouse has over 30 years’ service in policing and law enforcement. He is currently Director General (Threats) at the National Crime Agency (NCA).  He joined the NCA in June 2018 and for 5 years was the Director General (Operations), responsible for leading the NCA’s operational work. More recently he held the DG (Strategic Planning) role, overseeing critical functions which included finalising the NCA’s move to Endeavour Square, Business Planning, launching the NCA Academy and leading the NCA’s response to Police Reform, which he retains responsibility for.

As DG (Threats) at the NCA, Steve is also responsible for leading the whole-of-system operational response to serious and organised crime (SOC), with NCA coordinating contributions from policing and other national agencies. The focus is on reducing crime and harms, through investigative disruption and also collaboration with the finance and tech industry to design out crime.  His current responsibilities include leadership of the National Cyber Crime Unit and the National Economic Crime Centre. 

Dr. Stephen Topliss is a thought leader in fraud and digital identity and is frequent speaker at conferences and webinars. At LexisNexis Risk Solutions, Stephen is responsible for the strategic direction of fraud and identity global markets, driving product strategy and innovation aligned with customers’ current and future needs.

Dr. Topliss holds a PhD in Space Plasma Physics and is fluent in Dutch and French in addition to his native English. Dr. Topliss currently resides in Amsterdam.

As Senior Director of Financial Crime Compliance, Vera is responsible for developing and executing strategies with the bank and non-bank financial institutions in Europe. Most recently, Vera spent 10 years at Dow Jones as a senior sales executive, working with large financial institutions on their financial crime needs. Specialising in both the operational landscape and the regulatory landscape around AML/KYC and transaction screening.

Will Lyne is an experienced and internationally respected leader in the field of serious and organised crime. Currently the Head of Economic and Cybercrime at the Metropolitan Police, Will leads the Commands that protect Londoners from threats such as fraud and ransomware.  

Will has worked in law enforcement since joining the UK National Crime Agency as a trainee investigator in 2010. From 2011 to 2013, Will worked in Afghanistan delivering investigations with local, military and international partners, before joining the National Cyber Crime Unit in 2013. From 2016 to 2020, Will led the NCA’s liaison team and online crime engagement with the FBI based in Washington D.C., USA.

Will has led numerous high-profile investigations covering money laundering, fraud, kidnap & extortion and cyber offending. This includes multiple disruptions of the world’s most harmful cybercrime group, EvilCorp, and leading Op Destabilise, the UK’s largest economic crime investigation that dismantled a multi-billion global Russian illicit finance network. Will has also led the development of pioneering artificial intelligence capabilities within the NCA, contributing to the related NPCC national standards.

A 2008 graduate of University College London and a 2018 graduate of the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, Will graduated from the College of Policing Executive Leadership Programme in 2025. Alongside his role, Will is studying for a PhD at the University of Cambridge Institute of Criminology, with a thesis focused on online threats.