3-4 September 2019
Dubai, United Arab Emirates
3-4 September 2019
Dubai, United Arab Emirates
Innovative, agile and multi-award winning banking leader with over 25 years' international financial services experience with leading blue-chip institutions across three continents in progressive leadership roles, both executive and NED, in Investment Banking, Wealth Management, general management, business development, strategy and latterly in FinTech. His value proposition is centered around enabling challenger banks to establish strategic partnerships with FinTechs to create profitable financial products using an 'open architecture model.' Expert in driving digital banking transformations both in terms of creating 'best in class' digital customer experiences, and transforming key internal support functions to fully align with the overall digital transformation programs of financial institutions.
In his role Bashar oversees the IBM business in the Gulf Countries and the Levant working with clients and partners across industries. Prior to that he was the Business Unit Executive for IBM software business in MENA. Bashar began his career with IBM in the United Kingdom and held several managerial and executive positions in software development, services, sales & marketing. His international career includes several assignments in the USA, Europe and the Middle East.
Kilani has a passion for thought leadership around Digital Transformation, Artificial Intelligence, Blockchain, Cloud and has spoken at many international and regional conferences. He holds an MBA in Management from the University of Reading, an M.Sc. in Computer Engineering from the University of Surrey both in the United Kingdom and B.Sc. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Jordan.
Sanjay Khanna joined RAKBANK in September 2011 as Chief Information Officer where he is responsible for developing a vision for the Information Technology (IT) department, ensuring high quality of overall services to the Bank from the technology department, and establishing and maintaining an appropriate technological infrastructure with the Bank’s business partners.
Prior to joining RAKBANK, Sanjay served as Deputy General Manager at ICICI Bank Ltd for six and a half years where during his tenure he headed various technology groups including International Banking Technology Group and the Shared Services Technology Group. He also spent seven years at the National Bank of Oman and six years with Deutsche Software (India) and his last designations, respectively, were Senior Managers of Systems and Senior Consultant.
Yasar is a digital transformation strategist specialized in financial services industry with over 22 years of experience spanning across Turkey, Eastern Europe, Middle East and Africa. He is a design thinking led innovation practitioner and a blockchain enthusiast. Throughout many technology led reimagined business process improvement engagements for financial services industry customers along his career at Oracle, FIS, Capgemini, SAP and lastly Microsoft, Yasar strives to help the C-suite craft a strategic value realization roadmap for their business renovation pursuits.
Paolo Barbesino has been a part of this industry for the last 20 years and has successfully designed and delivered a mixed incremental, evolutionary, and disruptive innovation that makes a business thrive with a track record in Financial Services and TMT.
Zubair Ahmed is the Senior Vice President, Head of IT & Business Innovation at Emirates Islamic, one of most prominent and the fastest growing banks in the region. A Harvard Alumni, with 24+ years of IT & Financial experience, Zubair previously held challenging leadership roles at the heart of the Finance Technology industry. Over the years, he has been involved in the development & execution of IT strategy encompassing implementations of new core systems, direct channels, infrastructure solutions and process institutionalization.
Nicholas Hacking is currently Sales Director with ERI Bancaire SA.
Nicholas is co-responsible for ERI’s Sales activities internationally, and is also responsible for its operations in the US/Caribbean, Middle East and Asia/Pacific, as well as the UK and Channel Islands. He has been with ERI since 1996. Prior to joining ERI, Nicholas worked for several IT companies, and in client facing and operational roles in the wealth management operations of several international banks.
ERI’s software application, the OLYMPIC Banking System, is specifically designed for financial institutions, especially in the retail and private banking, wealth management, fund and investment management areas.
Senior Executive with 19+ Years of experience in Banking and Telecommunication. Recognized as visionary and reformer, acknowledged for planning and execution of result oriented Strategies, and large transformation programs.
Philip King is the Global Head of Retail Banking at ADIB. He joined the bank in 2013 with over three decades of banking experience across Europe, the Americas and the Middle East.
Mr. King is currently directing the strategy to grow ADIB into a leading retail bank in terms of revenue, market share and its presence in the expat market. He has achieved growth in excess of past performance and above market rates through revenue acceleration initiatives, by driving nascent lines of business such as Wealth Management and Bancassurance, and by launching marketing and branding campaigns to target the expat market. Philip also directs strategic initiatives including network expansion, digital strategy, contact centre optimization and digitalization.
Mr. King also leads the full Retail Banking Proposition comprising of Liabilities & Wealth Management, Assets, Distribution, Cards, SME, e-Channels, UAE Marketing, Expat Strategic Business Unit, Segments, Customer Experience and COO.
He works to ensure the highest standards of customer service and brand consistency across product ranges and multi-channels including branch, mobile and digital. He has led the team at ADIB to win multiple awards in the sector for customer service and innovation.
Prior to joning ADIB Mr. King managed various retail franchises for Citibank, including 5 years with Citi in Poland, which had over 86 branches, and ABN Amro, which included Saudi Hollandi Bank in Saudi Arabia with 41 branches for 30 months, and ABN Amro Latin America for 3 years. He was most recently responsible for the start-up and growth of retail banking for International Bank of Qatar based in Doha.
Philip is a graduate of Bristol University in England and has an MBA from London Business School.
Olga Parra is IBM Financial Crimes Leader part of Watson Financial Services Solution in MEA. Olga is a senior Analytics professional with over 23 years of successful international experience in building and implementing solutions that addresses complex business analytics and information management needs. Olga started her career at IBM Colombia where she lead the Pension Funds sector and the Payments portfolio for the Andean Countries. In 1998 she joined Systems Xcellence, a software company specialized in Pharmacy Benefits Management where she lead both implementation and support services for US and Latin America customers.
At her return at IBM in Canada she was part of the IBM - Bank of Montreal (BMO FG) team where she focused in the Information Management department. Olga was part of IBM’s EDW , MDM, Data Governance, Data Strategy initiatives in support of AML programs. She joined the GBS Business Analytics and Optimization team in 2009 focused on Financial Services. Her skills and experience include Information Management disciplines such Data Governance, MDM, Big Data/EDW, Advance Analytics, Campaign Management, Performance Management,, Fraud, AML and Risk Management.
A Digital Business proponent, Bhaskar has over the last 15 years consulted with various Banks, Brokerages and Asset management firms across US, UK/Europe, Middle East & South East Asia. He started his career at India’s largest private bank, ICICI bank before consulting with clients like Charles Schwab, Thomson Reuters, RBC, Invesco & Goldman Sachs, CMC Markets, Macquarie Securities, Bursa Malaysia etc. A staunch believer in Digital & Hybrid propositions with core focus as the end-customer experience & proposition, Bhaskar embarked on WeInvest after a 7-year stint with Headstrong Capital Markets running both European & Asian businesses. He holds an Engineering degree from IIT Madras and an MBA from IIM Ahmedabad.
Ali has 8+ years of experience in the intersection of Financial Services & IT. Prior to joining Microsoft, he spent his time with Thomson Reuters and Citibank mainly in business and strategy development targeting large banks internationally. For the last two years at Microsoft, he works for Industry Solutions & Global Accounts organization and is responsible for business development and sales for the largest banks & insurance companies in Middle East & Africa (MEA). Ali also supports central bank initiatives to create and enable a financially inclusive ecosystem. He focuses on Microsoft’s strategy for Banking, Capital Markets, and Insurances and works with his team on large transformational projects to drive enhanced customer experience, increase revenue, optimize cost, and manage risk & compliance leveraging the latest technologies.
Ali is a certified Project Management Professional (PMP) and has a Masters in Business Administration (MBA) from IE Business School.
Erwin has over 20 years of experience in Banking and IT. Erwin joined the Temenos MEA team in 2018 to realize the Temenos ambition to conquer the Payments and Digital Channels market in Middle East and Africa. Prior to Temenos, Erwin worked 15 years with ING Group and 4+ years with IBM. Roles in ING varied from program management to correspondent banking management. Example projects were the transformation of batch to real time processing of payments for the domestic bank, adding on-line and mobile channels as well as expanding the bulk payments capabilities to Central and Eastern Europe. At IBM Erwin was responsible for Payments Modernization across MEA and supported several financial inclusion strategies in the region.
Vijit Malik has close to 3 decades of experience as a commercial banker. He has worked with both international banks like ANZ, ABN Amro, American Express, Credit Suisse, as well as local UAE banks like United Arab Bank & Mashreq. He has more than 19 years of experience in the UAE and currently heads the Corporate & Institutional Banking (CIB) business at UAB.
In his previous tenure with Mashreq, he was the Head of both the Large Corporate Business (4 years) and Emerging Corporate Business.
Mr. Bala aids to define the digital solution strategy for this industry, lead subject matter expert teams across the industry issues and help set the technology direction for our digital solutions.
Prior to DXC, Mr. Bala was Client Managing Director in the Financial Services Sector at Xerox where he controlled complex global relationships.
Before joining Xerox, Mr. Bala worked at IBM as the Managing Partner and CTO for Asia Pacific region; Shearson Lehman Brothers as the CTO; Reuters as the Senior Vice President in charge of Partners & Global Alliances, as also the start-up in the Wealth Management space.
Over the course of 30 years, Mr. Bala is a proven leader with a track record spanning in USA, India, Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan and China. Starting in Information Technology, he has worked in roles that extend Business Management, Services Delivery, Services Sales, Strategic Planning, Solutions Architecture, Indirect Channel Management and Sales including Product; in regional and global roles.
Mr. Bala has successfully managed start-up’s, start-up operations in medium and large sized organisations, growing and maintaining businesses, managing P&L’s and Cost Centers, Front Line Sales and Marketing, Product Development & Innovation, Consulting and Functional Experience; such as Business Finance, Operations, Technology and Sales. Industry exposure includes Consulting (Financial Services), Financial Services, Government, Manufacturing and Technology.
Mr. Hariprasad Chede is the head of information security at the National Bank of Fujairah in the UAE. He has over 18 years of experience in information security, consulting, and risk management within the financial services sector. He also holds several prestigious certifications in information security and assurance from leading organizations such as ISACA and (ISC)2. He has been associated with the ISACA UAE Chapter since 2006 and is currently its president.
In his current role, Brian leads the Information Security team of Commercial Bank International (CBI), which is a UAE based commercial bank. At the top of his agenda is working with the bank’s senior leadership team to prioritize and align security initiatives with the bank’s evolving strategy. This is especially important considering the fast pace of changes within cyber security, (new threat actors, changing methods and motives of attack) and how banks do business today. He has held this role since July 2016.
Brian started out in risk management with PwC, consulting for clients across multiple industries; from financial services to telecom, retail and oil & gas companies. With a passion for the financial services sector, he joined Barclays Bank working in deepening his knowledge across technology, risk management and finance products and services. In his 17 years working experience, Brian has held numerous positions delivering risk projects across Africa, Middle East, Europe and Asia including: Head of Operational Risk and Information Security, Assistant Manager Systems and Process Assurance, Chief Operating Officer – Technology Risk, Vice President Internal Audit and Chief Internal Auditor. He holds industry certifications including CCISO, CISM, CISA, FCCA and an MBA from Durham University.
Astrid has over a decade of experience in the areas of technology assurance, information and technology risk and compliance within Global Financial Services. Born and bred in the innovative Scandinavian FinTech market, Astrid has worked both in assurance and consultancy at EY across the Nordics and Africa, before branching into the Financial Industry.
Astrid is highly passionate about Technology and Information Risk Management in the challenging, high speed financial technology environments we surround ourselves with today.
Thomas has over 20 years' experience in banking, working across a number of different fields - mainly in investment banking, wealth management and retail banking.
Before joining Dorsum he worked as Director Innovations in the private clients division at UniCredit Bank in Munich. This role included the responsibility for FinTech cooperations and the integration of innovative ideas and concepts into the business processes of the bank. Prior to that he was Deputy CEO of Takarekbank in Budapest, a co-operative central bank for 115 local Hungarian co-operative banks with 1,650 branches, overseeing the capital markets and payments business. Thomas built his career in German DZ BANK Group where he held various senior positions including Managing Director of DZ BANK Ireland in Dublin.
Maciej Sałata - Senior Consultant at Comarch (est. 1993), a provider of innovative software and IT services for financial institutions worldwide. Maciej has focused his career on helping banks drive innovation, explore new revenue opportunities, lower operating costs and improve user experience in the area of digital banking for corporate and SME customers.
Having been in software development, project management and consulting for top banks, Maciej has acquired close to 9 years of international experience in technology and business alike, which allow him to provide uniquely insightful solutions to problems faced by modern financial institutions
Ahsan Ali is a seasoned risk professional, with a unique blend of experience across commercial banking, consumer banking, and development finance. Over the last 20 years, Ahsan has worked in multiple disciplines primarily Corporate finance, SME banking, Risk management, Operations, and Strategy. He has worked in multiple jurisdictions in the EMEA region including the UK, Switzerland, and Greece. For the last 11 years, he has been based in the Middle East.
For more than 20 years, Daragh O’Byrne has been helping financial institutions get the maximum return on their investments in mission critical Information Technology systems. At Nucleus Software, he is the Vice President and Global Head of Marketing & Alliances where he is responsible for driving business transformation through integrated and strategic marketing initiatives. Prior to joining Nucleus Software, Mr. O’Byrne held range of senior management positions in leading technology companies such as Misys and BPC Banking Technologies. His industry experience and in-depth understanding of technology drives his passion to ensure that value is delivered for customers.
Daragh O’Byrne is responsible for driving business transformation through integrated and strategic marketing initiatives. He brings over 20 years’ experience in the Financial Services application software sector. Daragh’s key focus area has been ensuring that software provides tangible business benefits for customers and that these benefits are explained in a clear, concise and compelling way. His industry experience and in-depth understanding of technology drives his passion to ensure that value is delivered to customers.
Arjun Singh is the Managing Director for Asia and the head of Envestnet | Yodlee's growing operations. In his role, he oversees the development center in India and also spearheads revenue and user growth in the region covering Asia and Middle East. With more than 25 years of experience running and growing businesses, Arjun has held senior roles at Aon Hewitt in Asia, WNS, ABN AMRO Bank in Amsterdam, GE Capital Information Services, and ANZ Grindlays Bank in Delhi and Melbourne. Under Arjun’s leadership, the Envestnet | Yodlee India operation has grown to over twelve hundred employees, with continually expanding international sales. Arjun has an MBA from IIM Calcutta and a Bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering from IIT, Bombay. Arjun is passionate about education and is a trustee at the Om Foundation School for underprivileged children, and was a board member of the Welham Girls School. His interests include tennis, golf, travel and theater.
Imre Rokob is the Director of Business Development of Dorsum, responsible for the company’s expansion to new international markets. He is an experienced PMP certified project leader with strong IT and financial knowledge. He managed several software implementation projects in Central and Eastern Europe for the financial market as being the project director of the company for 10 years. Leveraging his broad experience in brokerage, asset management, wealth management and integration of banking systems he has started to supervise product development projects for next generation tablet/smartphone trading and private banking applications.
Ilker Tasdemir is the Director of Business Analytics and Managing Partner at MDSap. With has over 20 years of experience in data science especially in advanced analytics, Ilker has rich experience helping customers in the Finance and Banking sector use their data in creating business value. Ilker Tasdemir has a Bachelor of Science graduate from Marmara University and has multiple technical certifications in Enterprise Information Management, Security and Enterprise Data Warehousing, Business Analytics as well as management Certificates from prominent institutions. He is married and currently resides in Abu Dhabi of the United Arab Emirates.
Harish heads Product Marketing at Vymo and is building an Intelligent Sales Assistant that will help salespeople all over the world be more productive. Prior to this, Harish used to run the Developer ecosystem for Microsoft India, by partnering with Startups & Independent Product companies to drive adoption of Microsoft platforms and executing joint go-to-market programs. An 18-year Microsoft veteran, Harish has held leadership positions across engineering, technical evangelism, consulting and corporate strategy. Harish has a graduate degree in Statistics and an MBA in Computer Systems, calls Bangalore home and is an avid long-distance runner.
Putting data over opinions is one of Flow’s mantras, and as a result he spends his time testing ideas and challenging assumptions. As a Senior UX Manager at RBBi, he crafts digital experiences powered by his favourite gems: user insights. Passionate about the way humans interact, Flow is often found running a social experiment. His passion is backed by a strong understanding of consumer behaviour, built with global academic and business leaders.
Béla Vér, CEO of ApPello, graduated with degree in Information Technology and later acquired MBA degree at Corvinus University of Budapest. After a few years working experience in IT and finance, in 1998 he became one of the founders of ApPello Ltd. Since its foundation - due to the talented leadership - the small start-up has evolved into a strong SME company and a recognized financial software developer in the CEE region. Moreover, since 2013, ApPello gained international clients (in Croatia, Czech, Romania and Slovakia) as well. Presently Béla is responsible for the business development and expansion in foreign countries.
Francois provides technical leadership during a period where Hitachi is transforming from providing horizontal platforms to vertically optimized solutions focused on Data Integration, Analytics and IoT solutions. He works with customer decision makers from Banking, Financial Services, Insurance, FinTech and RegTech Firms to understand business drivers and challenges, identify synergies with our strategic partners, and develop compelling vertical propositions. Prior to this role he worked as the CTO for Vertical Markets for EMEA and the CTO for Platforms and Infrastructure for EMEA.
Stuart has been leading innovation in payments across multinational organizations since 2007. He specializes in digital wallets, e-commerce, and remittance. Stuart is based in Dubai and leads the Wirecard Product and Partnership strategy for the Middle East, Asia, and Africa.
Arundhoti joined Xpress Money in 2013 with around 10 years of experience in the Financial Services Industry. She set up and managed the Business Strategy and Business Intelligence & Analytics function which entails creating a footprint of the organization in terms of entry into new geographies, new channels and new products, with a focus on market share, topline and overall profitability.
With her expertise, Xpress Money has been able to explore new models of partnerships in new geographies, which have proven to be extremely beneficial to the brand. Her commendable contribution to the business in her current role has helped in diversifying her responsibilities with the recent addition of leading the brand’s online and digital business. Right from conceptualizing new digital business models to partnering with leading digital players in the business, she is responsible for increasing Xpress Money’s share in the digital remittance business.
Prior to joining Xpress Money, Arundhoti has been a founding member of the Fintech startup in India, Loylty Rewardz, wherein she contributed to overall organization building, business development and strategy. Apart from that, she has headed the co-branded credit cards portfolio at ICICI Bank, India and has worked as Futures and Options Product Specialist at Citi Global Markets, Hong Kong. She started her career as a technology enthusiast with Tata Consultancy Services as a software developer.
Arundhoti is a Gold Medalist in Engineering from NIT Durgapur and is an MBA graduate from IIM Ahmedabad. While not crunching numbers, Arundhoti is a thorough foodie, travel enthusiast, movie and TV series buff and an avid reader.
Nabilah Annuar is currently the Editor of Banker Middle East. With a demonstrated history in financial journalism and publishing, she was previously an editor with Islamic Finance News (IFN). Nabilah holds a Bachelor of Laws from the International Islamic University Malaysia and an Islamic Finance Qualification from the Chartered Institute of Securities and Investment.
Manuel leads IBM’s Digital Transformation in the FSS Industry across MEA. Manuel’s role involves direct interaction with C Level Executives of the major banks and financial institutions in the region to discuss the approach and impact of digital transformation in their organizations including the definition of a business case for digital reinvention, the assessment of the impact of digitalization in the operations of the bank, the design of a digital roadmap that orchestrates all key digital domains (Cx, Cognitive & Robotic Process Automation, Data/Analytics, IT architecture, Agile/Devops, new organizational models, Innovation/Fintech strategy and Digital Marketing), the definition of the target operating model and the design of the governance model that manages the transformation. Manuel joined IBM MEA in early 2016 . Previously, Manuel was Director at Deloitte Digital, responsible for digital strategy and strategic alliances and Managing Director at Gartner with full responsibility for the digital transformatin consulting practice across several industries (specially Banking and Telecommunications) in southern Europe. He started his professional career at Arthur Andersen as strategy and business consultant.
Sandeep heads the Digital business for APMEA at HCL. He has been working to bring modern application technologies to enterprise customers working extensively on platform based development, continuous delivery and integration with leading banks and government agencies across APMEA. He is excited in the new world of technologies that internet companies are championing and firmly believes these should be appropriately adopted by enterprises. Few of the internet technologies that he champions adoption are Pega, Kafka, React.JS and big data tools. At HCL, Sandeep has closely worked with CBA, Toll Logistics, Brightstar and OCBC in enabling adoption of digital technologies Prior to HCL, Sandeep was one of the first learners of .Net during the beta phases late in 2001 and eventually developed early world .Net based web applications at CSC and Infosys. Sandeep has an MBA in Strategy and Marketing apart from an engineering degree in Electronics and Instrumentation.
Expotrade Middle East FZ-LLC
Level 10, 1002 Aurora Tower, Dubai Media City
PO Box 500686 Dubai, U.A.E.
Tel: +9714-4542135 Fax: +9714-4542136
Email: info@expotrade-me.com
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