Agenda - day 2

Jason Sechrist is the head of product solutions, Emea at AuditBoard where he works with various teams to help automate the administrative tasks of audit, risk and compliance activities. Sechrist was previously the global head of internal audit at Rackspace Managed Cloud Company where his responsibilities included developing and executing on a risk-based audit plan for the company's global footprint of data centers and office locations across the Americas, Europe and Asia. He started his auditing career with PwC in Silicon Valley, working primarily with software and cloud service providers where he advised chief technical officers, chief information security officers, compliance managers, and system engineers. Prior to becoming an auditor, Sechrist led user testing and development for global aviation weather visualization software as a service while serving on active duty for the United States Air Force. He remains active in the industry, volunteering as audit committee chair for the University of Texas San Antonio, and regularly speaks on topics relevant to technology risks at national and international IIA and ISACA events.

Claire has worked in a heavily regulated financial industry for over 25 years, delivering business transformation using the power of orchestration tooling and data models. She now works at EY, specialising in ServiceNow focussing on risk, resilience and cyber.  Claire is an expert in driving collaboration to connect and surface accurate data across organisations, enabling a holistic consumable capability for Risk and Security officers supporting effective decisions and actions confidently at pace.  

Victoria Collins' career spans over 25 years working in financial institutions, in trading, finance and risk roles, predominately in risk management. 

She has been with Nomura for ten years, focused on enterprise-wide risk management. Collins was appointed global head of climate risk & ESG three years ago. She is responsible for establishing and managing the global risk management framework for climate risk and ESG, and for ensuring risk management is aligned to the firm’s sustainability objectives, such as net zero.

Nadia Bouzebra is the head of model risk management in Close Brothers, a UK merchant banking group who provides lending, deposit taking, wealth management services and securities trading. Within her current role, she is responsible for providing oversight and challenge to the models used in the Bank. The team ensures models are compliant with internal policy and governance, and with external regulations. They are also responsible for Close Brothers’ understanding and monitoring of the model risk through independent model validation and governance.

Bouzebra has a quantitative background - master’s degree in econometrics and a postgraduate in economics - with over 15 years of experience in risk management in the financial sector. She has worked in several significant engagements in France and UK, with a particular focus on model development, validation, risk governance, stress testing.

Stella Farrington has been writing about energy markets for over 20 years, working at Futures World News and Dow Jones Newswires before moving to Energy Risk in 2004. She spent eight years as the editor of Energy Risk and six as a writer, before moving into her current role as Energy Risk’s head of content and a commercial editor with Infopro Digital’s Ignite team.

Philip Alexander is the regulation desk 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, Alexander 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.

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.

Dimitris is a managing director of non-financial risk management at Credit Suisse, where he is focused on the advancement of the non-financial risk principle primarily through the development of analytical methods & tools. He has global responsibility for capital and stress testing, risk appetite and NFR analytics, and is the 2021 winner of Innovation in Risk Management award from Risk.net.

Dimitris is also a member of the board of directors of ORX, the largest industry association with membership extending to 100+ international banks & insurers. He is the chairman of the ORX Board Audit, Risk & Quality Assurance subcommittee and works closely with ORX management on the association’s strategy.

Prior to joining Credit Suisse in 2010, he held multiple roles within group risk analytics at Lloyds Bank. Dimitris is mathematician and holds an MSc in Risk & Financial Mathematics from Brunel University.

Maria Lombardo heads the global ESG advisory team at Standard Chartered Bank, supporting the bank clients in their sustainability and transition strategies. She spent more than 25 years in investment banking as managing director, heading emerging market equities sales at Lazard, UBS, Sberbank and Unicredit. 

Lombardo 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. Lombardo 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. She is a member of the CFA UK Climate and Investing committee, and is a mentor of the acceleration programme at the Cambridge Institute of Sustainability Leadership.

Vasiliki Basiou has more than seven years experience in operational risk capital modelling at Credit Suisse. Currently, she is working on climate risk assessments for operational risk through analytics at UBS. Basiou is skilled in quantitative analysis and risk management, with a master's degree in financial risk management from University College London (UCL). She acquired a certificate in ESG investing from CFA in 2021 due to a high interest in climate risk management and the overall ESG realm.

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.

Andrew Dillin is a seasoned security intelligence lead in the field of cyber security, with over a decade of experience in safeguarding digital environments from evolving threats. With a background in computer science and a passion for staying ahead of emerging cyber risks, he has dedicated his career to protecting organisations against cyber-attacks and security threats.

Throughout his career, Dillin has spearheaded numerous initiatives to enhance security postures, leveraging his expertise in threat intelligence, incident response, and vulnerability management. His insights have been instrumental in fortifying the defenses of a number of finance sector companies.

With near 40 years' experience, including UK government, senior legal private practice, corporate board level and academic roles, Mark Lewis is one of the UK's leading specialist technology lawyers. He advises customers and providers in the acquisition and deployment of mission-critical technology products, systems, and IT-enabled services in several sectors, with a focus on regulated financial services and essential national infrastructure.

After 27 years as a partner in leading City of London and international law firms, including as a practice head, and as co-founder and chair of law firms associated with PwC and EY, Mark has re-joined Stephenson Harwood LLP (after a 26-year break) as a senior consultant in the technology practice, based in their London office.  

Since 2019, Lewis has been a visiting professor in practice in the law school of the London School of Economics and Political Science, where he has lectured on AI and machine learning, cybersecurity and resilience, cloud computing and related computing business models and relationships. He has also been a guest lecturer on technology, outsourcing and offshoring at Warwick Business School and the Warwick Manufacturing Group.

Lewis has served as chair of Morgan Chambers plc, one of Europe's leading sourcing and outsourcing advisory firms (since acquired by KPMG), as an independent non-executive director of Delt Shared Services Limited (a public sector-owned provider of IT, cyber and business process shared services to regional government, the NHS and other public services bodies), as well as a non-executive director of CoSector (a provider of, among others, computing services to the University of London and other major UK universities).

He has contributed chapters to various books and leading texts on information technology and outsourcing, as well as co-authoring white papers on ethical investment in AI and the ethical and legal deployment of AI in human capital management. Lewis has had articles published in, among others, the Journal of Securities Operations & Custody, Practical Law (PLC), Practical Law Magazine, and was general editor and UK chapter author in Getting The Deal Through – Outsourcing (2014-16) and Getting The Deal Through – Cloud Computing (2018-20) ".

He was called to Bar (England and Wales) by Lincoln's Inn in 1982. He has practised as a Solicitor of the Senior Courts of England and Wales since requalifying in 1991

Biljana Vujović is cheif risk officer for Addiko Bank, supervising the bank's management team, ensuring effective decision making and adherence to ethical standards. Her role includes continuously evaluating the bank's risk appetite and ensuring that risk management strategies are implemented effectively, ensuring that bank consistently meets regulatory standards, monitoring for potential violations, and overseeing the establishment and effectiveness of internal controls, as well as supervising the internal and external audit to ensure they are robust and independent. 

Vujović also chars the risk committee of the supervisory board

Marina specializes in risk management and innovation with a focus on Artificial Intelligence and digital transformation. She has extensive experience in global capital markets non-financial risks with a focus on conduct risk, rogue trading, fraud, financial crime, trade and comms surveillance. She also has experience in risks and controls relating to Artificial Intelligence, Large Language Models and Data Privacy.

Over the years, Marina has held positions as an executive committee and board member at various institutions and participated in Global Capital Market and Innovation forums.

Marina has extensive experience working with regulators globally. She acted as lead validator, at Top Tier banks, on regulatory conduct risk programmes sanctioned by the US Federal Reserve Bank and the US Department of Justice. Marina also acted as the Head of Global Markets Risk & Control Assessment at BNP Paribas. She was the Citigroup Head of Audit for a number of countries and received the Global recognition award for her performance. Previously, she worked in quantitative research as well as due diligence projects during M&A banking transactions and IPOs.

Marina is a qualified chartered accountant and member of the ICAEW. She completed a Technology Entrepreneurship course at Harvard as well as ‘AI Strategy & Governance’ and ‘ESG Risks & Opportunities’ courses at Wharton, University of Pennsylvania. She also studied FinTech at the University of Oxford Said Business School during which she developed a FinTech innovation idea aiming at fundraising for people impacted by natural disasters. Marina studied Investment Management at the London Business School and has an MSc in Economics & Finance from Warwick Business School.

Marina is very interested in technology. She focuses on digital transformation and driving innovation in risk management by using data analytics, LLMs and AI.  She is a member of the ICAEW Financial Services Faculty Board and ICAEW Digital Assets Steering Group. She is a founding member and vice-chair of the ExCo of the Hellenic Tech Network, participated in studies around the implementation of digital currencies, and reviewed the AI Governance of a leading FinTech academic centre in the UK.

Marina acts as guest lecturer at Executive MBA courses and speaker at conferences globally covering conduct risk, digital transformation, digital assets, Artificial Intelligence, FinTech and ESG. She is also a guest contributor on these topics writing in industry journals.

Ronald Lukassen serves as the Director Actuarial Risk and Actuarial Function Holder at Athora Netherlands, a prominent Pension and Life insurer in the Netherlands and part of Athora Group.

Being part of this financially strong European group, Athora Netherlands can make use of unique investment expertise that helps to achieve a healthy, sustainable and safe return for its clients.

In this role, Ronald is, amongst others, tasked with establishing risk policies, conducting risk assessments and performing validations for all existing and developing models, encompassing AI-related data, assumptions, models, results, and processes. With a background in econometrics, membership in the Dutch Actuarial Society, and extensive leadership training, Ronald has held significant second-line positions. Before joining Athora, he gained experience at The Dutch Central Bank (De Nederlandsche Bank) in the Solvency II policy team, as well as serving as an investment manager at Aegon Asset Management. Aged 49, Ronald is married with two children and is recognized for his ongoing commitment to professional development.

Adrian Cox is a strategist on Deutsche Bank’s Thematic Research team, focused on the implications of Artificial Intelligence for investors, enterprises and society. He joined Deutsche Bank in 2009 and held senior leadership roles in Communications in London and Sydney before joining DB Research. He previously spent a decade covering finance and economics as an award-winning journalist and editor at Bloomberg News and the Financial Times in London, Brussels and New York. He is a graduate of Cambridge University and has an MBA from City University in London.

Lucy is a qualified actuary with over a decade of experience in risk management roles. She began her career in pensions consulting, followed by 7 years at the Pension Protection Fund where she held a variety of roles spanning areas ranging from developing UK and EU legislation to capital modelling. Prior to Hiscox, she was the Group Financial Risk Director at Bupa, a designated IAIG  (among the largest and most geographically diverse insurance groups regulated by the PRA). Her current role spans both financial and operational risk across Hiscox’s international specialist insurance portfolios. Lucy has broad experience of considering how risk functions can support their 1^st line as AI is adopted into BAU.

Jack joined Quantifi in 2018. Jack is responsible for Professional Services and oversees all client related activity including implementations, product customizations and pre and post sales support. After graduating from economics at Cambridge, Jack started work for Henderson Global Investors as an Investment Analyst after which he moved to Rail-Pen as an Investment Manager. Jack then transitioned to Imagine Software where he was Head of Consulting (EMEA) and specialized in quantitative implementations. Jack holds numerous financial qualifications including a master’s degree in quantitative finance from CASS business school.

Sebastian joined Quantifi in 2019 and is responsible for Global Sales. Prior to joining Quantifi, Sebastian worked at BNP Paribas structuring FX and Commodity derivatives. He holds two MSc degrees from The London School of Economics and Political Science spanning the fields of finance, economics, mathematics and philosophy.