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.

Christine has led the industry's fraud prevention activities on bank account abuse for seven years, recently becoming the Industry Money Mule lead. Christine was responsible for developing a cross-sector partnership with the Police and National Trading Standards, resulting in the launch of the award-winning Banking Protocol, aimed at protecting vulnerable consumers within bank branches. This national initiative is embedded within the policing plan for all 45 UK Police Forces, is used by 54 national financial institutions as well as the Post Office and is now being expanded to other banking channels.

Christine began her career as a Masters graduate with the Metropolitan Police, spending nine years with the Met in total, five of which were in fraud prevention.

Claire Rees is a Client Manager in the UK for Jade ThirdEye. Claire has over 21 year's experience working in Risk Management roles in financial services, 17 years of which were spent specialising in Financial Crime Prevention in a number of senior roles including most recently as Head of Fraud and AML with a mortgage lender and service provider. Claire has participated in a number of regulatory and industry Financial Crime panels including a Government AML advisory panel and the CIFAS Insider Threat Advisory Board which explored ever-changing insider fraud threats.

Passionate about fighting fraud through technical and functional solutions for prevention controls and effective mitigation, ranging across cards, digital security, direct channel servicing, authentication and more. I’ve spent over 10 years delivering effective fraud strategies, with expertise in combining technical acumen with practical solutions to address the evolving threats posed by fraudsters.

Part of the Feedzai Product Strategy team, Dan collaborates closely with banks worldwide and supports them to understand the range of fraud prevention and detection capabilities offered by Feedzai. He focuses on aligning the company product strategy with the direction of the future market, ensuring that Feedzai stays ahead of the curve.

In addition to working directly with clients, Dan also plays a crucial role in enabling other teams within Feedzai to provide exceptional customer service and results. He is a thought leader within the industry, frequently authoring white papers and blogs, speaking with press and analysts, and appearing on stage at various events across the globe.

Before joining Feedzai, Dan served as the Director of Solutions at LexisNexis Risk Solutions and held various fraud-related positions at Lloyds Banking Group UK. In these roles, he leveraged the latest digital fraud technology to protect the bank's online and mobile users, demonstrating his extensive expertise in the field.

Diane is a senior leader and the nominated officer at Yorkshire Building Society (YBS). She is a highly experienced financial crime (FC) prevention professional and driven senior leader with over 20 years of experience across all aspects of Financial Crime Compliance and having worked in both 1st & 2nd LOD. Her current remit includes FC Risk, FC Transformation, FC Operations, including AML, Savings and Mortgage Fraud, Systems, Intel and Analytics and Internal Fraud.

Throughout her career she has worked in a number of financial services businesses, with a focus on Retail Savings, Mortgages and Commercial Mortgages. Diane has extensive experience leading teams and works in partnership with industry to promote the reduction of harm from Financial Crimes. She is a fellow member of the ICA and holds multiple Diplomas and specialist certificates with the institute.

Dianne is a Remote Payment Channels fraud threat lead at UK Finance, working closely with financial institutions and other sectors to close vulnerabilities beyond the perimeter of the banks. Having worked in fraud prevention for over 17 years, Dianne now primarily engages with companies outside the FI sector to encourage and foster collaborative initiative to protect mutual customers. 

Prior to joining UK Finance, Dianne worked in the gambling sector mitigating economic crime and meeting regulatory reporting requirements. 

Don Simon is Head of Intelligence at STOP THE TRAFFIK and has worked in law enforcement (primarily Met Police) for over 30 years and brings a wealth of investigative and undercover experience to the Intelligence Team.

Gareth commenced his career in the New Zealand Police where he investigated organised crime activity. He moved to London in 2005 to join a Consultancy firm, where he led financial crime change programmes across a broad range of financial institutions. Gareth joined Virgin Money Group in January 2023 as the Head of Fraud. In this role he leads all activity to prevent and detect internal and external fraud, overseeing strategy, analytics and operations functions. He is also responsible for the Bank’s money mule disruption strategy, with the ambition to create a hostile environment for mules.  

In his role at Cifas, the UK’s fraud prevention service, Mark is responsible for innovation across both new and existing services, as well as overseeing the execution and roll-out of innovative new products. Cifas is a non-for-profit membership organisation that sits at the heart of the UK’s fight against fraud and financial crime, sharing data, intelligence and learning between the UK’s largest financial services organisations including all the retail banks. Mark has a wealth of expertise in fraud, identity verification and identity assurance, having worked globally across multiple industry sectors for over 25 years in these areas.

Prior to Cifas, during his career, he spent 16 years at GBG, where he led the product management team for its identity verification suite, managing the launch of the industry’s first truly electronic identity verification (EIDV) service in 2004. He went on to become General Manager, running both the Identity Verification and Identity Assurance divisions. Before joining Cifas, Mark held the position of Head of Product and Engineering for TruNarrative, playing a key role in positioning the start-up organisation to gain a significant presence in the industry before it was acquired by LexisNexis.

Matt Smallman is the author of “Unlock Your Call Centre: A proven way to upgrade security, efficiency and caller experience”, a book based on his over decade’s experience transforming the security processes of the world’s most customer-centric organisations. Matt’s mission is to remove “Security Farce” from the call centre and all our lives. All organisations need to secure their call centre interactions, but very few do this effectively today.

Matt is an independent consultant engaged by end-users of the latest authentication and fraud prevention technologies. Matt previously held senior strategy, design, and delivery roles at Barclays and Lloyds Banking Group. He led the ground breaking and multi-award-winning implementation of Voice Biometrics for Barclays Wealth in 2012.

Neil Giles is Director of Intelligence at STOP THE TRAFFIK and was one of the founding members of STOP THE TRAFFIK and the former CEO of Traffik Analysis Hub - our anti-trafficking data warehouse. Neil was Director of the Serious Organised Crime Agency (now the NCA). Neil has been instrumental in the development of anti-human trafficking data collection and prevention methods that STOP THE TRAFFIK now share with clients and partners globally.

Tim’s focus is to ensure our customers are successful in making their contact centres more secure and to lead our community of companies and government agencies in the wider fight against fraud.

Tim’s career has spanned various large financial institutions such as Barclaycard and Santander, and technology providers such as FICO and Callsign. He brings a wealth of experience in the evolution of fraud and the profound impact it has on its victims, so he is exceedingly well-placed to take the lead in collaborating with Smartnumbers’ customers to fight back and protect their end customers.

Tim has watched with fascination the role the contact centre channel plays in fraud - from how criminals harvest data to build a better picture of their victims, to the way a scammer influences call agents via cold and warm calling techniques. It's clear that the voice channel needs to be brought in from the cold, no longer seen as a legacy channel but a channel where significant risk resides and one that requires as much protection in the fraud ecosystem as the digital ones.