2023 Speakers

Stefana Brown is chief risk officer, UK protection and fintech, and director, IT and data protection risk, at Legal & General Retail. She spent 10 years at Lloyds Banking Group and four at M&G Investments before joining Legal & General Retail.

Prior to joining Risk, he reported on the futures and foreign exchange industries for Dow Jones' Financial News and the Euromoney group of publications. Osborn holds a bachelor's degree in English literature from the University of Warwick.

Michael Grimwade is managing director, operational risk, at ICBC Standard Bank and has previously held senior op risk management roles at MUFG Securities, RBS and Lloyds. Prior to this, he held management consultant positions at PwC and Deloitte Consulting. Grimwade has been a director of the Institute of Operational Risk (IOR) and is currently the chair of the Association of Foreign Banks' Operational Risk Expert Panel. He has authored a number of articles on setting appetite for op risk; scenario analysis techniques; climate change; quantifying emerging risks; and modelling op risk capital. He received an award in 2014 from the IOR for his contribution to the profession. His second book, Ten laws of operational risk, was published in December 2021.

Wei Bennett is the Deputy General Manager and Chief Risk Officer at the China Construction Bank London Branch (CCBLB). She is responsible for the CCBLB's enterprise risk management covering a spectrum of credit risk, market risk and operational risk. Wei also led the CCBLB's Culture & Change Programme in delivering robust culture, conduct and governance at the bank.

Prior to CCBLB, Wei worked at Bank of England for 10 years across risk management & regulatory supervision areas. Wei is a keen promoter for the Sino-UK engagement and cooperation in financial markets and financial regulation, and contributed to the PBOC-BoE joint Symposium during the 10th UK-China Economic and Financial Dialogue ("EFD") in 2019, one to name.
 
Wei has a PhD in Economics and is a qualified Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA). Wei has a number of publications in leading journals on implications of uncertainty to economic and financial activities. Wei's current interests include Green Finance and Data Analytical in risk management.  

Bob Barclay has over forty years financial services experience gained in both domestic and international environments.

During his 17 years of operational risk and 19 years of internal audit experience he has specialised in consumer products, fiduciary, asset management, private banking, securities servicing, stockbroking and commercial banking with firms including RBS, Citibank (that included two years in Australia as Internal Audit Manager), BNY Mellon and Société Générale. He currently holds the position of Risk Manager at ABN AMRO Bank N.V., UK Branch and is a member of the bank’s Conduct and Ethics committee. Bob has also been involved in the implementation and embedment of risk management frameworks during periods of major regulatory change and has held senior risk management roles that has required dealing with external stakeholders including clients, Regulators and external auditors.

Bob is a member of the London Institute of Banking and Finance, the CISI Risk Forum Committee and the Association of Foreign Banks Operational Risk Committee

Eelco van Dijk joined ING Bank in 2008 and started working in the modelling and scenario team of Group Operational Risk.

Since 2013 ING reports operational risk regulatory capital according to the AMA model.

The AMA model uses among other internal loss events. Therefore Eelco deals with many aspects of internal loss events (data quality, completeness, etc)

Prior to moving to ING Eelco worked at ABN AMRO in a variety of risk roles for almost 20 years.

Eelco is member of the Risk Committee of the Dutch VBA CFA chapter  

 

Julien is managing director & founder of Aevitium. Prior to founding his freelance consultancy Julien, worked at Fidelity International (FIL) from July 2017 as head of non-financial risk and has over twenty years’ experience in the financial industry. Haye has worked for several financial services institutions in treasury, risk, capital management, programme management and trading.

Nitesh is the group operational risk director at Lloyds Banking Group. Nitesh joined LBG in 2022 from Credit Suisse where he had an extensive audit career most recently as chief auditor for technology, operations, change and third party risks. Nitesh has over 20 years of operational risk experience, including control design, risk culture and use of emerging technology.

On a personal level, he has a love of travel, football and also spends some of his time helping local charities.

Merlin Linehan is a Risk Manager at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD). He is also a regular commentator and speaker on geopolitical and climate topics.

Praveen heads up the IT risk and cybersecurity at ICBC Standard Bank. He has spent over 20 years in the financial services sector, including 10 years in management consultancy.  He likes to speak about technology, risk, regulation, cybersecurity and transformation. He is also a fan of Formula 1 and cricket.

Richard (Dick) Flood

Dick is a managing director.  He is the global lead for the operational resilience risk function within State Street’s non-financial risk organization. Prior to his current role, Dick led operational risk across State Street’s EMEA business.

Dick has worked at State Street for more than 30 years, where he has held various positions across both the first and second lines of defence in Boston and London.

Philip Alexander is the risk management and regulation editor for Risk.net, overseeing a team of journalists in the UK, US and Asia. He was previously senior editor at The Banker magazine, covering financial regulation, capital markets, derivatives, and central and eastern Europe.

Prior to entering journalism, Philip edited sovereign credit research for rating agency Standard & Poor’s in London. He was awarded a PhD in modern history by the University of Cambridge for a thesis on Britain and European integration.

Gennaro Scalo is responsible for Archer business and Go to Market strategy across Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. In his role he is responsible for the overall success of both Archer’s customers and business. Gennaro has a career that spans the broader areas of governance risk and compliance (GRC), and information security. He has helped organisations build integrated functions to address the many challenges associated with risk, including risk management, regulatory compliance, business continuity, disaster recovery, e-discovery, cyber investigations, computer forensics, incident response, IT audit, records management, and privacy. In his many roles he has worked alongside leading organisations to help define strategic, efficient, sustainable, and integrated risk programs

Anna Mazzone leads the Risk & ESG Business in EMEA for ServiceNow and is a non-executive director for The ODI (Open Data Institute) founded by Tim Berners-Lee. In 2013, Anna founded the global capital markets first KYC Managed Shared Services while at Thomson Reuters. In 2016, Anna was named to Innovate Finance ‘Women in Fintech Powerlist.’ Ms. Mazzone’s deep domain expertise in information technology for GRC, KYC, third party risk/vendor (KYS/KYV) and financial markets (FinTech), has contributed to significant growth at companies including BsAML, Thomson Reuters, CME Group, Markit, and MetricStream.

Jamie joined the FSA/FCA in October 2007 following 10 years as an industry lobbyist. At the FCA, he has held a number of roles across consumer affairs, supervision, risk and markets, holding senior leadership roles in Retail Banking Supervision, Risk & Compliance Oversight and Market Oversight. He was deputy accountable executive for MiFID II implementation in the UK and accountable executive for the project onshoring the MiFID regime in the UK in preparation for Brexit. He is currently Head of Secondary Market Oversight, responsible for discharging the FCA’s duties under MiFID and MAR in secondary markets.

Simon is a risk manager and security consultant specialising in the management of supply chain risk with professional with experience in defence, financial services, health and the security sectors. He has extensive experience as a service manager, managing complex supply chain risk management processes for a global Tier 2 financial services company. 

He is currently developing a supply chain & risk (Scar) assessment product as part of the Stara product family for BAE Digital Intelligence.  This product evaluates a customer's supply chain risk management (SCRM) capability and then provides managed capability improvement and transformation plans to enhance the customer's ability to identify, evaluate and treat supply chain risk.

Prior to joining BAE Digital Intelligence, Simon worked at JP Morgan as a KYC specialist managing the initial onboarding and due diligence AML risk assessments of the bank’s multinational corporate clients.  Subsequently joining the bank’s project re-engineering team to refine and enhance their KYC and AML platforms and manage the cultural change for these enhancements. 

This role was preceded by a year’s Internship with Barclays Bank PLC, delivering risk and change management for the corporate bank in the wake of the Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, focusing on compliance and governance.

This second career in project and risk management, has been based on 15 years of commissioned service in the British Army, gaining broad experience in the practical management of risk, infrastructure security, the procurement of military technology and the personal protection of VIPs, whilst serving in the Middle East and Europe.

Maria heads the global ESG advisory team at Standard Chartered Bank, supporting the bank clients in their sustainability and transition strategies.

Maria spent more than 25 years in investment banking as managing director, heading emerging market equities sales at Lazard, UBS, Sberbank and Unicredit. She moved into sustainability in 2016 when she joined the non-profit CDP as head of their financial investor members. She then headed the ESG Client strategies and climate change strategies at Invesco Global Asset Management in EMEA, leading the growth of sustainability investment solutions and the set-up of the global asset manager’s climate strategy.

Authors of ESG thought leadership whitepapers, mentor, and contributor to industry initiatives in sustainable financing. Maria holds a CFA ESG, a diploma at Cambridge University Sustainability Leadership Institute, along with a CEMS Master and a bachelor’s degree in financial intermediaries at Bocconi University. Maria is a member of the CFA UK Climate and Investing committee, she is a mentor of the acceleration programme at the Cambridge Institute of Sustainability Leadership.

Ben leads LBG’s oversight of operational resilience and technology resilience risks.  Ben enjoys building functions that anticipate new risk challenges, develop innovative ways of optimising the treatment of risk, and help our business succeed.  He has a passion for coaching, enhancing capability and bringing executives and regulators on the journey.  As LBG embarks on it’s biggest transformation yet, operational and technologyresilience remains at the forefront of our mission to Help Britain Prosper.

Tin will join a European digital currency exchange later this year as Group Head of Risk. He has worked at Flow Traders as the Head of Risk. Previously he worked for TP ICAP and before that the FCA, where he was responsible for supervision of areas such as the review and evaluation of firms, model waivers, structured products, the UK Regulated Covered Bond market and the UK Securitisation market including STS. He has also represented the UK at IOSCO and various ESAs. His previous industry experience was from various roles on the buy- and sell-side including quantitative analysis, fund management and economic capital modelling. He holds a dual-honours Masters in Engineering from the University of Warwick, called to the Bar of England and Wales, Fellow Chartered Management Accountant, Chartered MCSI, a member of the Institute of Operational Risk and of the Network of Operational Risk Modellers.

Sophie is the chief risk and compliance officer of Gulf International Bank (UK) Limited. She is responsible for driving an effective risk culture throughout the company, designing the risk and compliance frameworks and overseeing risk management and regulatory compliance practices. Sophie joined GIB (UK) with extensive experience in the field, having previously served as executive director for compliance and operational risk control at UBS Asset Management. Before this, she was the global head of operational organisational risk at Barings and non-executive director of the Baring-Coller Secondaries Fund. Sophie was also an operational risk manager and the group head of investment risk framework at Schroders.

Sophie graduated from Université Lumière Lyon 2 with a master’s degree in economics and finance. She is a member of the Chartered Institute for Securities & Investment, a fellow of the Climate Safe Lending Network and a trustee of First Light South West, a charity supporting people affected by sexual violence and domestic abuse.

Fazal is the head of ORM – asset management at Phoenix Group. He has 15 years of financial services industry experience working across investment banking and insurance domains covering global businesses i.e., public and private markets. Focused on supporting first line functions in making sound business decisions on a risk adjusted basis is a key motivation for success.

In his spare time, Fazal enjoys football, movies and the company of a good book.

Sean has 27 years’ experience working in risk, compliance and assurance in financial services, including banking and payments for Santander, Barclays and Shawbrook. Sean has been responsible for implementing, overseeing and embedding risk, compliance, data protection and resiliency frameworks.  

Dr Madhu Acharyya is a senior lecturer for risk & finance at Glasgow Caledonian University (London Campus). He completed his PhD on enterprise risk management from the University of Southampton, UK. In addition, he holds MSc in mathematics and MSc in risk management & insurance from City University, London. In his current affiliation he is the programme director for MSc insurance and sustainable risk management and MSc international banking and finance. Professionally, Madhu is a fellow of the Institute of Risk Management, London and a chartered risk & insurance manager with Chartered Insurance Institute, London.

His research focuses on the broader area of risk management including enterprise risk management, operational risk management, cyber risk management, corporate finance and capital management, corporate risk governance, climate change risk, alternative risk financing and risk literacy.

He is a frequent speaker in both academic and practitioners’ conferences and workshops.

Sam Barrett is a researcher at the International Institute for Environment and Development. He works on evaluations and value-for-money of adaptation projects and programmes, the integration of climate into development planning and decision-making, private sector investment in adaptation and developing investment cases for adaptation.

Costas Mourselas is a financial journalist and deputy editor on the risk management desk at Risk.net. He previously reported on derivatives at GlobalCapital. Costas has a bachelor’s degree in Philosophy, Politics and Economics from the University of York, UK.

Gaurav Kapoor is the Co-CEO and Co-founder of MetricStream.

Gaurav Kapoor has also served as chief operating officer with responsibility for the overall strategy, marketing, sales, partners, customer success, services and support.  Prior to that, he served as chief financial officer of MetricStream until 2010. He has nearly a decade of international operating experience with Citi and other organisations. He has been serving as an advisor and on the board of other Silicon Valley tech companies.

Gaurav is a thought leader in integrated risk management with deep domain expertise and has built a legacy of innovation from the onset of governance, risk management, and compliance solutions. He has also served as a speaker and contributed writer for Garp, RMA and the Sifma investment community. He currently serves on the Forbes Technology Council.

Previously, Gaurav held executive positions at OpenGrowth and ArcadiaOne. Prior to these, he spent several years in business, marketing, and operations roles at Citibank in Asia and in the U.S.

He also serves on the board of Regalix, a digital innovation and marketing company. Gaurav has a bachelor's degree in technology (with Honors) from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), a degree in Business from FMS, Delhi, and an MBA from the Wharton Business School at the University of Pennsylvania, where he graduated as a Palmer Scholar.