Where the UK and Europe’s Payments & RegTech Leaders Shape the Future of Finance
#financialinnovation
6th Annual
Financial Innovation Forum
Payments & RegTech
17 SEPTEMBER 2026
Montcalm Hotel - Mayfair - London, United Kingdom
OUR SPEAKERS
Natasha Powell
Chief Compliance Officer UK at Kraken
Natasha Powell has spent 22+ years making compliance less scary and regulated firms more resilient. Starting out at the FCA, she's since built compliance frameworks from scratch, untangled regulatory messes and helped high-growth firms scale without falling foul of the rulebook — across crypto, payments, investment banking and beyond. A seasoned CCO and SMF16/17, she knows the rulebook inside out because she helped write it.
Andrew Clifford
Global Head Anti-Bribery & Corruption at Standard Chartered Bank
Andrew is Global Head of Anti-Bribery & Corruption at Standard Chartered Bank. He has 25 years of experience in financial crimes compliance, enterprise-wide risk management, compliance and business transformation in roles undertaken previously at Deutsche Bank, Shell and management consulting. He is an advocate for AI enablement and transformation in the financial services industry. He is also committed to Diversity and Inclusion and Wellbeing, as a Mental Health First Aider and leading the Gender Colleague Community across Europe at Standard Chartered Bank.
Chris Redmond
Director at IBM Promontory
Chris leads IBM Promontory’s Operational Resilience & Digital Transformation Practice in the UK and Ireland. Promontory are IBM Consulting’s Financial Services Risk and Regulatory experts. We are trusted advisors to senior decision makers on how to manage technology change resiliently and compliantly. Chris has deep and broad hands-on experience of regulation from the perspectives of policy, supervision, risk, and operations. This includes his previous experience of working for Amazon Web Services, the Bank of England, the European Commission, and HM Treasury.
Aisling Twomey
Head of Financial Crime, Business Banking, EU & Sanctions at Monzo
Aisling has worked in Financial Crime for over a decade. In that time, she has completed KYC for customers in corporate, investment, business and retail banks across multiple products from capital markets and prepaid cards. For the past five years, she has designed controls including customer risk assessments, transaction monitoring rules and CDD processes for some of Britain’s biggest banks and building societies. She has a lot of experience delivering change programmes stemming from regulatory engagement.
Aisling holds two law degrees and before changing career to work in financial crime, she worked in aviation security and for a series of human rights charities. She has delivered human rights education for the Council of Europe in Ireland, Azerbaijan and Hungary. She is currently working on her PhD, which will examine money laundering regulation in the art market.
Anthony Corner
Head of Regulatory Compliance and DMLRO at ANNA Money
I am Head of Regulatory Compliance and DMLRO at ANNA Money, where I lead regulatory strategy, oversight and engagement as we scale a fast-growing UK fintech in a highly scrutinised environment. My role focuses on ensuring that growth, product innovation and customer outcomes are underpinned by robust governance and proportionate controls, preventing expansion from creating avoidable regulatory surprises.
I began my career at the Financial Conduct Authority in the payments and e-money supervision team, supervising firms across the sector and gaining first-hand insight into the FCA’s expectations around safeguarding, financial crime, governance and operational resilience. That supervisory perspective continues to shape how I think about sustainable scaling.
I later joined Thistle Initiatives, advising fintechs, payment institutions and e-money firms on authorisation, regulatory remediation and building compliance frameworks fit for growth. Working with firms at different stages - from start-up to international expansion - reinforced the importance of embedding compliance early, rather than retrofitting it under pressure.
Across regulator, consultancy and in-house leadership roles, I’ve seen how quickly growth can outpace controls. I’m particularly interested in how UK fintechs can scale confidently by aligning commercial ambition with clear regulatory strategy, strong governance and open supervisory engagement - enabling innovation without unpleasant surprises.
Mateo Jarrin Cuvi
Global Manager for Partners & Media at The Association of Governance, Risk & Compliance, UK
During his 20-year career, Mateo Jarrin Cuvi has played important roles in a wide array of industries, eventually landing in the financial services sector where he has focused on content creation and management.
After dabbling in the oil and gas field, managing media relations for the Venezuelan Embassy in Washington DC, and working as a program manager for a Cypriot study abroad firm, Mateo served as Content Manager for Taxlinked, an international network for tax and law professionals, and Content Writer for FXPRIMUS, a Forex broker with a strong presence in southeast Asia. Today, he leads the charge for the International Governance and Compliance Association (IGCA) as Global Manager for Partners and Media.
Mateo holds a BA in Foreign Affairs and Latin American Studies from the University of Virginia (UVA) and an MA in Latin American Studies with a focus on Anthropology from the University of California in San Diego (UCSD). Plus, he’s a budding writer who has published fiction, food and wine articles, and other travel-related pieces in several local and global publications.
Chris Aruliah
Chief Commercial Officer at Agant
Chris leads the Commercial team at Agant, Britain’s leading GBP stablecoin issuer for institutions. Prior to Agant, Chris was a pioneer in mobile banking and payments for the AIM-listed company Monitise. Following Monitise, Chris entered the world of crypto, launching and leading Token in Europe in 2016 and then going on to lead banking and then business development at Bitstamp. From Bitstamp, Chris joined the Exec team at BCB Group, a banking and payments EMI for the crypto industry, where he led the commercial and client services teams. More recently, Chris headed up OTC business development at Wincent, one of the world’s largest crypto hedge funds.
Chris’s experience across banking, payments, crypto and capital markets has given him a unique perspective on how stablecoins bridge the world of traditional finance and crypto, combining the benefits of both worlds.
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Fabian Meyer
Founder & Managing Partner, Amaranth Advisory
Fabian has 15+ years of experience in top-management consulting for IT strategies, instant payments, and technical enablement; special focus on the financial services industry. Former professional work at Social Me (Founder), T-Systems and CORE (Managing Partner).
Alex Dunn
Director - Innovation & Strategic Growth Initiatives at Visa
Alex Dunn is Director for Innovation & Strategic Growth Initiatives at Visa. He is part of the Visa Direct money movement business where he is leading global strategic growth projects to build the future of money and payments inc. several cross-industry collaboration with central banks and Visa’s clients. He previously worked in Visa's Product & Payment Services Risk team, leading strategic risk initiatives to drive growth, enhance Visa's operational resilience and protect the payments ecosystem.
Before Visa, Alex worked for 7.5 years at the Bank of England across Risk, Supervision and Parliamentary Affairs. Inc. a secondment from the Bank as Head of Risk at the UK Office for National Statistics. Alex’s research interests include the role of payments and settlement systems, emerging digital finance, and the evolution of central bank balance sheets.
Alex is a Chartered Manager and has an Executive MBA from the University of Exeter Business School, an MSc from the London School of Economics and a BA from the University of Hull. Alex has Diploma and Associate qualifications in Guitar from the London College of Music.
Anton Globus
Group Director: Finance and Innovation at Paysend
Anton leads finance innovation and system change at Paysend. Paysend is a UK-headquartered global fintech on a mission to make cross-border payments simple for everyone whilst building the largest digital payment network.
Prior to Paysend Anton worked on own business projects in SaaS and tourism space, held CFO roles at Barloworld, a listed multinational industrial distributor, and prior to that was involved in consulting.
Anton is a TRIUM EMBA graduate and a Chartered Accountant (SA).
Jeremy McDougall
Strategic Solution Consulting Director at ACI Worldwide
As a Strategic Solution Consulting Director at ACI Worldwide, Jeremy has committed his career to advancing his vision of providing the vast majority of people with access to safe, affordable and transparent payments. As a respected thought leader, Jeremy has authored papers and blogs on the importance of industry collaboration and regularly speaks at Payments events to try and find people who will continue to help create a resilient and inclusive payments ecosystem.
Sulabh Agarwal
Global Payments Lead at Accenture
As our global lead for Payments, Sulabh helps financial institutions and other organizations across the world navigate the shifting payments landscape, combat lost payments revenue, and control and mitigate operational risk throughout the payments value chain. Throughout his career, Sulabh has directed numerous client engagements ranging from defining strategy through to systems integration and implementation. Prior to Accenture, Sulabh worked for Capital One in the cards business. Outside of work, Sulabh likes to spend time with his wife and three kids. He is an engineer from the Indian Institute of Technology and has an MBA from INSEAD.
Michael Salmony
CEO at Payments Innovation Consulting
Dr Michael Salmony is an internationally recognised authority on the future of money,
tokenisation, and digital financial infrastructure. His Springer book Tokenisation of Money: From
Fiat Currencies to Stablecoins has established him as a leading voice on this rapidly evolving
landscape. He regularly advises central banks, commercial banks, regulators, and financial
service providers across Europe, Asia, Latin America, and beyond on tokenised money.
A board-level adviser to major banks, the European Commission, the ECB, and the World Bank,
he has spent decades at the intersection of payments strategy and innovation — including a
decade as Executive Adviser to the Board of Worldline, one of the world's largest financial
processors. He teaches at Oxford Business School on AI in FinTech and Open Banking, and his
work has been published and cited across multiple languages worldwide.
Dr Salmony studied at the University of Cambridge and is a Freeman of the City of London and
Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.
Nassos Paltayian
Head of Compliance & Information Security Officer at Abacus Limited
Nassos began his career as auditor for Financial Services companies and qualified as a Chartered Accountant in a Big4. Since 2014 Nassos serves as the Information Security Officer while simultaneously heading the Compliance Department at Abacus Limited which also provides advisory services and support to obliged entities in the field of regulatory compliance.
He is also a founding member and Vice chair of the ACAMS Cyprus chapter, and a very active member of the local and European community of compliance professionals. Nassos is also a Certified Risk Management Specialist on Russian Sanctions.
Nassos was also the leader of the DNFBP module for the National Risk Assessment and participated in numerous task forces for the issuance of Directives, Guidance Notes and Certifications in the field of AML, CTF and Sanctions compliance locally and abroad.