Mr Bill Chua, Former Head, Financial Institutions, UOB

Bill Chua was former MD and head of global financial institutions group, UOB, managing relationships with banks, non-bank financial institutions, supra-nationals, sovereigns and sovereign entities. In his 34 years of experience in the financial services industry, he has covered institutional wholesale and consumer banking in the front, middle and back offices. Prior to joining UOB in 2000, Chua was with Citibank for 20 years. He serves as a director for several UOB-owned companies and/or joint ventures, and is also an active member of the financial and education communities in Singapore.

Mr David Gyori, CEO, Banking Reports

David Gyori is a globally renowned FinTech consultant, trainer, author and keynote speaker. He is CEO of Banking Reports Ltd London, providing top quality ‘FinTech Training for Bankers’ all over the world. In addition, Gyori holds a number of key international positions: He is founding member of the World FinTech Association as well as member of the panel of judges of the European FinTech Awards. He is co-author of ‘The FINTECH Book’, published by Wiley and Sons in 2016, quickly becoming a global category best-seller. Gyori is faculty member of the Retail Banking Academy (London), one of the most prestigious banker-training facilities globally. He serves on the advisory board of multiple FinTech companies in the United Kingdom.

Mr Robin Lee, Director, ICFE Group of Companies

Robin Lee is responsible for managing both external and internal experience of the business for Inzsure, a commercial blockchain-powered insurtech solution. He is also a co-founder of the RegTech Connection, a digital community of regtech enthusiasts. He began his career in Silicon Valley in various start-ups within the compliance space. Lee also launched The Governance Risk AML Compliance Ethics Foundation (G.R.A.C.E.), an edtech/regtech firm which was subsequently acquired by RHTLaw Taylor-Wessing. Following the completion of the integration of G.R.A.C.E. within RHT, he joined Datarama, a regtech firm that specialises in digitally enhanced due diligence. Lee also sits on the advisory boards of the International Cybercrime and Forensics Examiners, Governance Risk and Compliance Investments and Technology (RegTech Investments) and Dynamic GRC.

Mr Gordian Gaeta, International Resource Director, The Asian Banker

Gordian Gaeta has been a banking consultant for some 25 years. He has advised and served many of the leading financial services organisations across Asia and close to half of the top 100 banks worldwide. He specialises in developing and implementing analytical solutions for complex strategic issues in financial services-related industries undergoing significant change or being exposed to intricate risk issues.

Mr Emmanuel Daniel, Chairman, The Asian Banker

Founder of The Asian Banker, the most respected provider of consulting and intelligence in the financial services industry in the Asia Pacific region and other emerging markets. Mr Daniel has led it to become a combination of leading industry research, publication and consulting house, with a strong reputation worldwide.

Mr Richard Hartung, International Resource Director, The Asian Banker

Richard has more than 20 years of experience in the payments and consumer financial services industry, primarily in the Asia Pacific region. Following work in retail banking in California and a short stint in government, Richard was part of the team that started up retail banking for Citibank in Japan. Richard joined MasterCard in 1993 and headed up Operations & Systems for the Asia Pacific region. He moved to Keppel TatLee Bank in 1999 and launched a new credit card program that became profitable in just over 1 year. He then managed the integration of Keppelcard into OCBC Bank and was the Card Center Manager at OCBC. Richard set up Transcarta in 2002 and focuses on assisting financial services companies with strategy, payments training programs, operations process enhancement, merchant acquiring, market entry and other business practices. He is also a freelance writer for The Asian Banker, Today, GTNews, Challenge and OOSKAnews

Mr Mark Mackenzie, APAC MD, Lenddo

Originally from Scotland, and having worked across Asia for the last 18 years Mark now manages Lenddo across East Asia and the Pacific region. Mark began his career in Construction Engineering but finding the Scottish climate not suited to prolonged periods of construction work, he returned to University to take an MBA. After a brief interlude in Academia where he worked in pioneering research in e-learning at Edinburgh University, he packed for Manila to take a consulting job and has never looked back! Mark considers working at Lenddo 'the best job in the world’.

Mr Andrew Tan, CEO, CrowdPlus, Malaysia

Andrew is a serial entrepreneur and the founding partner in two venture capital firm where he managed a pool of funds totaling up to 50million USD in which he is leading the firm’s investment and management team. Prior to CrowdPlus, Andrew was the Managing Partner and a financial-services investor at Tinkbig Venture and Appshack Asia. While at TinkBig Venture, he led investments in thirty two startup deals with other co VC amounted a total of 20million USD committed fund. Prior to that, Andrew was a private-equity investor where he regularly advised his limited Partners on private-equity deals and fund formation. Andrew has been featured various publication and newspapers as an outstanding entrepreneur. His previous experience include EBay UK, TESCO, MAVCAP and CGC Malaysia.

Ms Sonal Bengani, Co-Founder, Monexo

Sonal is Co-Founder of Monexo - a P2P lending marketplace in India and in Hong Kong. She brings 19 years of experience working in leading software company and in startups. She held various leadership roles at Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), the largest tech company in India. She has led distributed teams on complex client assignments in the areas of process consulting, strategy, and business research and business management for Fortune 100 clients.

Mr Roger Crook, CEO, Capital Springboard

Roger Crook is the CEO of Capital Springboard, Singapore’s leading peer-to-peer invoice financing platform for SMEs. Capital Springboard facilitates trade for SMEs by granting them access to working capital provided by investors which include; accredited investors, institutional investors, HNWIs, IFAs and family offices. Launched in June 2016, the platform has garnered strong interest amongst accredited investors and local SMEs. As of 31st January 2017, the company had crossed SGD 134 million worth of transactions. Roger has over two decades of operational experience across 129 markets; and was formerly a member of the board of management, Deutsche Post AG (DeutschePost DHL) and global CEO of DHL Global Forwarding. 

Mr Sandeep Bhatia, Founder & CEO,TrakInvest Group

After completing his undergraduate studies at the age of 19, Bobby started his career as an options trader at O’Connor & Associates (Chicago) in 1994. His 20+ years’ of experience in the trading and private equity industry saw him become a Principal of Asia’s first leverage buyout fund at JP Morgan Partners Asia as well as Managing Director & Head of Principal Investments APAC at AIG Financial Products. Bobby’s roots in investments and his entrepreneurial spirit drove him to establish Trakinvest Group that has two principal lines of business: (i) TrakInvest – virtual stock trading tool built for education and talent identification and (ii) Hyrd – end to end video based recruitment software for talent identification, qualification and acquisition. TrakInvest Group today includes a number of Global Corporates and leading Universities as it partners and clients.

Mr Soul Htite, Co-Founder of Lending Club, Founder and CEO, Dianrong.com

Htite co-founded Lending Club, the world's largest benchmarking Peer 2 Peer (P2P) company, received the prestigious Technology Pioneer Award at the 2011 World Economic Forum. He was also Lending Club’s head of technology until 2011. In 2012, Htite came to China and established Dianrong.com that focuses on the online marketplace and banking solution services on the basis of advanced technology. Dianrong.com is now China’s leading internet finance company.

Mr Tang Ning, Founder and CEO of CreditEase, Chairman of the Beijing P2P Association

Mr. Tang Ning was educated at the School of Mathematical Sciences at Peking University, and continued his education in the field of Economics in the U.S. In 2006, recognizing the contribution that the 60 million small and micro enterprises make to the Chinese economy, and inspired by the fledgling microfinance sectors in other developing economies, Ning established CreditEase. The philosophy behind the business was and remains today that everyone deserves access to credit, and that credit can generate value for all sectors of the community. This guiding philosophy has underpinned the growth of the business from a single product business in 2006, to today's diversified financial services business. Heartened by the response of clients to the initial product offering, and their high creditworthiness, Ning has expanded the business to cover new customer segments and geographies. CreditEase now provides products and services to farmers and agricultural borrowers, microfinance clients, consumers, micro-businesses and wealth management clients covering 244 cities（including Hong Kong）and 93 rural areas across China.

Mr Lawrence Yong, Co-Founder and CEO, MoolahSense

Lawrence Yong is a recent entrepreneur, having stepped out of his corporate shell in September 2013. Prior to founding MoolahSense, a marketplace lending platform that seeks to expand small and medium sized enterprises’ (SMEs) sources of capital by connecting them to everyday investors, Yong worked extensively in the financial services sector for more than 12 years in the field, acquiring a combination of front-to-back, buy-and sell-side experiences in the area of fixed income. He spent the first half of his professional career in wealth management, with his last role heading a multi award-winning investment product team at Standard Chartered Bank. Before founding MoolahSense, Yong was a vice president at Macquarie Capital, where he was closely involved in developing its sales and structuring business at its fixed income division.

Mr Jeremy Tan, Chairman, Korvac Holdings and CEO, Liquid Group

Liquid Group is a mobile payment platform company head quartered in Singapore with presence in Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, and Hong Kong. Liquid Group offers an interoperable platform that provides banking, payment, and digital lifestyle services, revolutionizing the payment experience for both consumers and businesses. Jeremy is also the Chairman of Korvac Holdings Pte Ltd, an investment holding company founded in 1999, which invests in and develops payment and consumer data processing company and services. Jeremy is currently in the Singapore infocomm Technology Federation (SiTF), where he holds the position of Honorary Secretary. He also serves as the Chairman of SiTF’s Singapore Enterprise Chapter, covering Singapore SMEs and startups. Prior to this, Jeremy was also on the board of Infocomm Investment Pte Ltd from 2009 to 2017, helping support the rapid development of Singapore's startup ecosystem centered around Blk 71 and BASH. 

Mr Ron Suber, President, Prosper Marketplace

Suber has more than 20 years’ experience in sales, marketing and business development across the hedge fund, broker dealer, and registered investment advisor industries. As president of Prosper Marketplace, America's first Peer 2 Peer lending platform with more than two million members and over $4 billion in funded loans, Suber is responsible for the company’s business development, ensuring a balance between institutional as well as retail investors. Since its launch in 2006, Prosper Marketplace has evolved into a personal finance company that offers products and services beyond personal loans to help people get on top of their finances.

Mr Adrian Chng, Co-founder, Chairman and CEO at Fintonia

Adrian has a strong strategy, mergers & acquisitions and corporate finance background with over 10 years’ experience as a C-level executive. He leads Fintonia to invest in FinTech companies in ASEAN and Hong Kong, partnering with entrepreneurs to rapidly grow their businesses and improve the efficiency of financial services in the region. Fintonia focuses on delivering business and operational value creation to its investments, with its Managing Directors having had significant experience leading internet and technology businesses across Asia. As former CEO of JobsDB and former CFO of Bluescope Asia, Adrian has expertise in high growth and transformation environments and is skilled in working across both western and Asian cultures. He appeared on CNBC on May 2016 in an interview where he talks about why the YPO Global Pulse index showed a boost in business confidence among Asian CEOs.

Mr Rakesh Krishnamuti, Head, Large Enterprise Acquisition & Relationship Management, Southeast Asia, PayPal

Rakesh Krishnamuti leads the Large Enterprise Acquisition & Relationship Management team for PayPal in Southeast Asia. Based in Singapore, Rakesh is responsible for driving PayPal’s business in the region through acquiring leading e-commerce merchants and engaging with PayPal’s large merchant portfolio in Southeast Asia. Rakesh has over twenty-years of experience in the consumer and merchant payments industry, covering product development, sales, relationship management and business development. In between corporate stints at Citibank, NETS and leading SEA payments provider 2C2P, Rakesh also co-founded and ran a regional marketing consultancy that served Visa, SingTel, MasterCard & United Overseas Bank. Rakesh graduated from Western Michigan University with a Bachelors in Business Administration.

Mr John Bailon, CEO, Satoshi Citadel Industries

Since 2014, John has been building a Bitcoin ecosystem in the Philippines with the help of like-minded partners. John leads the team as CEO, guiding the vision of the company and development of SCI’s products. The rare combination of technical expertise alongside business acumen has allowed him to lead the company’s rapid growth, and his passion for developing Bitcoin technology is reflected in SCI’s successful lineup of products and services today. John is convinced that money transfers is an enormous opportunity in the Philippines, with at least US$30 billion entering the country in 2014 alone, and another US$40 billion in internal remittances. More importantly, he sees Bitcoin as the breakthrough technology that will revolutionize this industry. John understands technology, recognizes business opportunities and combines them into winning products.

Mr Shankar Vaddadi, CEO & Founder, I-Lend, India

Shankar Vaddadi is an entrepreneur with success in C-level and leadership across various industries and public companies in India. He has wide experience in Technology, Financial Inclusion Architecture and Social Entrepreneurship. Presently he is the Founder & CEO of i-Lend, which is India’s first P2P / Social Lending marketplace and is at the forefront of evangelising alternate finance as well as propagating this sector with all stakeholders including regulators and eco systems participants. i-Lend is the most experienced and comprehensive P2P lending marketplace in India with a lot of firsts to its credit. It has been adjudged as one of the top ten Alternate finance companies in Asia and is at the forefront of fintech innovation in India. Shankar believes in democratising finance, moving from a sellers’ to a buyers’ market and making credit available at reasonable rates of interest leading to financial inclusion.

Mr Umar Munshi, CEO, Ethis Ventures

Umar is the Founder of Ethis Ventures, an award-winning technology company based in Singapore, which builds and ventures with multiple Islamic Crowdfunding platforms. Munshi is also the CEO of EthisCrowd.com, the world’s first Real Estate Crowdfunding platform, focused mainly on Social Housing in Indonesia, and which won Best Islamic Crowdfunding Platform at the GIFA Awards 2016. Munshi is also the Chairman of the IslamicFintechAlliance.com. These groundbreaking initiatives led to his feature in the Islamica500 2016 publication of Islamic Economy influencers. Munshi sits on the Board of the Singapore Malay Chamber of Commerce (smcci.org.sg) and is the Singapore Representative of TDA (tangandiatas.com), an Indonesian Community of 20,000 entrepreneurs. Umar believes that the time has come for Muslim entrepreneurs worldwide to step up and push themselves to create and re-create value-generating startups for Muslim needs.

Mr Andrew Tan, CEO, Crowdplus.Asia, Malaysia

Andrew is a serial entrepreneur and the founding partner in two venture capital firms where he managed a pool of funds totaling up to 50 million USD in which he is leading the firm’s investment and management team. Prior to CrowdPlus, Andrew was the Managing Partner and a financial-services investor at Tinkbig Venture and Appshack Asia. While at TinkBig Venture, he led investments in thirty two startup deals with other co VC amounted a total of 20 million USD committed fund. Prior to that, Andrew was a private-equity investor where he regularly advised his limited Partners on private-equity deals and fund formation. Andrew has been featured on various publications and newspapers as an outstanding entrepreneur. His previous experience include EBay UK, TESCO, MAVCAP and CGC Malaysia. He is also an expert in dealing with mature e-commerce travel platforms like AirBnb, Agoda, and Expedia.

Mr Aditya Menon, Managing Director, Global Digital Strategy, Citigroup

Aditya currently drives global digital strategy at Citi in the capacity of a Digital Strategist, a Business Solutions Architect & Strategic Product Designer, with domain expertise in digital disruption across consumer & corporate banking, mobile & digital payments, data analytics and dynamic offers, digital identity, Open banking, API strategy & architecture, banking value added services and driving innovation through labs and hackathons. He played a leadership role in the Strategic design of Citi consumer bank’s next generation Digital architecture. He has worked on strategic architecture for real-time big-data analytics as well as next generation technology strategy on topics such as AI, BlockChain, IOT, Regtech, Augmented experiences and disruptive digital platforms - that are transforming banking. Prior to Citi, Aditya has been a serial entrepreneur in transaction/retail banking/payments, and a mobile payments/financial inclusion pioneer and evangelist.

Mr Mark Makdad, Co-Founder, Moneytree

Mark has lived in Tokyo since 2005, starting his career in IT consulting and project staffing. In 2012, he co-founded Moneytree, a personal financial management (PFM) service that strives to better connect individuals and small businesses with their financial institutions. Mark is responsible for Moneytree's financial data portability platform, Moneytree LINK. He also serves on the board of the Fintech Association of Japan and chairs the API & Security committee, regularly interfacing with Japanese regulatory and industry bodies on Fintech and API matters. He is a fluent speaker of Japanese.

Mr David Shrier, Managing Director, MIT Connection Science and Engineering

David Shrier is a seasoned innovation catalyst and co-author of “Frontiers of Financial Technology” and “Trust: Data.” He is the managing director of MIT Connection Science and Engineering. He also leads the creation and launch of other new initiatives for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he teaches courses and workshops on the “Future Commerce”, “Data Academy”, “Big Data and Social Analytics”, and “Future Health”. He recently advised the European Commission on commercialising innovation with a focus on digital technology. He is also the founder and chief executive officer (CEO) of Distilled Analytics, an advanced credit risk solutions provider derived from MIT research and has started and/or led a number of private equity and venture capital-backed companies as CEO, CFO or COO.

Mr Duncan Klein , Head of Outbound Product Management

Mr Justin Wright, Regional Head, SEA, Beehive Asia

Justin, as the Responsible Executive for Asia, represents Beehive’s interests across the region. Having set up the strategic development and regional head office in Thailand, he is leading the growth of the Beehive Asia platform and promotion of P2P innovation throughout ASEAN, working closely with regulators and industry leaders to deliver smart finance solutions to SME’s. Justin has over 19 years of investment banking and funds management experience combined with more than 12 years in Asia Pacific deal advisory roles. Justin was previously a full time member of the Brussels based ‘EASDAQ’ market advisory committee and regular live commentator on CNBC Asia.

Mr Tobias Fischer, Director, Corporate Development, Capital Match

Working in the largest P2P Lending Marketplace for SMEs in Southeast Asia, Tobias drives the platform development and is responsible for debt- and equity investments, new products and regional expansion. Having build P2P Lending Marketplaces across Europe for Rocket Internet, Tobias bridges extensive knowledge in Alternative Lending from Europe to Asia. Tobias also advises the Mekong Business Initiative, an innovative policy advisory and advocacy project on regulatory challenges of integrating financial technology in Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar and Thailand (CLMV). The Mekong Business Initiative (MBI) is an Asian Development Bank project focused on strengthening private sector development across CLMV, with particular focus on high-growth SMEs and the alternative lending sector. In his capacity, he actively works with senior financial regulators from CLMV and Thailand among other key ecosystem stakeholders. Tobias had devoted his bachelor thesis to the topic, Peer 2 Peer Lending in Southeast Asia - A realistic alternative to traditional consumer credit?

Mr Joel Yarbrough, Head, Corporate Development & Payments, Grab

In his role, Joel oversees M&A, Integration and Partnerships to enhance end-to-end product experience for Grab's passengers, drivers and partners. Through the Grab platform, he seeks to help drivers and partners build opportunities for themselves, while delivering safe and accessible transport to Southeast Asia. Joel brings over 20 years of solution and product management experience to Grab, having served in senior management roles in leading Internet, finance, and management consulting firms. Throughout his career, Joel has been passionate about connecting the dots to make product vision a reality. He relishes the challenge of taking a part complex technology systems and rebuilding them to address real problems. Prior to joining Grab, Joel spent over six years at PayPal overseeing product strategy and product delivery in APAC, as well as delivery of solutions for large online and omnichannel partners. Joel was also a founding board member of PayPal’s non-profit and charitable giving fund.

Mr Alvin Wong, Head of Regional Products, SamsungPay

Alvin is based in Singapore and has more than 10 years of experience in mobile payments. He has deep experience in multiple perspectives within mobile payments end to end, from the early inception of NFC based payments from a service enabler, mobile proximity and remote payments, including mobile remittance during his time at SingTel and created mCash, now known as Dash. His current work focuses on building new experiences in the region on mobile value added services, online expansion, merchant partnerships and on mobile transit. He is also passionate about the user journey and experiences in mobile fintech as well as on digital security.