CEO AND CO-FOUNDER

WAHEED QAISER

Waheed has held executive management positions at Citibank, HSBC, UBS, IIBU, IBB, QCC and Maxim LLP.

Co-Founder of the first Islamic bank in the UK that was licensed in 2004.

Waheed has led operations in retail/private banking, investment banking, business development, sales & marketing, and all areas of Islamic banking in global financial institutions.

Waheed is a founding member of the Bank of England working party on Islamic mortgages and a founding member of the UK technical group at the Chartered Institute for Securities & Investments (CISI) for Islamic Finance Qualification (IFQ) Waheed has spoken and chaired over 100 professional and business conferences globally.

DEPUTY CEO, CRO AND CO-FOUNDER

JAMES PARKER

A highly experienced multi asset class regional head of portfolio risk management

Experienced in managing directional positions, concentration, liquidity & leverage on client portfolios, with responsibility for monitoring HFT strategies of clients to ensure leveraged limit ratios are not breached and for development and validating new risk methodologies from a global risk management perspective.

Experience in build, stress and calibrating models in terms of scenario development on clients' portfolios, and proposing suitable risk limits for clients supported by qualitative and quantitative analysis.

Experience in monitoring the markets and ensuring impact analysis is performed on concentrated portfolios.

Experienced in assessing new activity/markets by formulising a market risk opinion and assessing key risk implications.

Experienced in calculating variation risk, deposit risk, and financing risk for counterparty exposures (CVA) on a daily basis, and measuring exposures against predefined limits and analyse breaches when necessary with appropriate actions.

Experience in working with compliance on EMIR/Dodd Frank CFTC Regulations impacting the target business model.

Headed model risk committees covering all aspects of liquidity & market risk in support for board risk committee meetings.

DIRECTOR

MIKE ELLWOOD

Mike is a highly accomplished senior banking executive with over 30 years' extensive experience operating at board level in a variety of roles across a number of complex organisations in both the UK and internationally. Most recently developed Santander's Corporate and Commercial Banking from an insurgent into a significant player in the UK market with £20bn assets and £500m revenues. He has an exceptional track record of building businesses or leading critical transformational change programmes.

Mike has led a strategic analysis of the customer value proposition in the current corporate banking market in line with ambitious growth plans. Benchmarked to compare the existing proposition against best in class incumbent and emerging competition and set up a series of working groups to validate the findings. Mitigated related risks and formulated a plan to focus on key USP's and explicit customer benefits. Mike grew the International and Structured Finance revenues at Santander by more than 30% and substantially improved the customer experience .

Carried out a comprehensive review of the organisational structures and cost base across Corporate and Commercial banking to improve return on equity and maintain revenue growth. Identified in-efficiencies in the operating model and developed options focusing on rationalisation of the management structure and alignment with strategy. Assessed the associated risks to the customer experience and created a transformation plan. Led the implementation resulting in a 30% reduction in the management structure headcount saving £10M pa, improved ROE by two points and maintained revenue growth at 20%.

CHAIRMAN AND FOUNDER

KRISTINN SIGTRYGGSSON

Former CEO of Coopers & Lybrand in Iceland, for almost two decades, where he streamlined and modernised the firm to a fully compatible international firm, which is now part of PwC.

Kristinn also served as president of the institute of chartered accountants, for a part of his time in office as CEO of C&L.

BENOIT WAELKENS

Currently CEO of the Payments Association of Kenya, a delegated function of the Central Bank of Kenya.

Benoit has over 35 years experience as a banking executive, 20 years of which were various roles as CEO and COO, holding specialist experience in areas of Global Risk and Banking Operations, with long term C level experience.

He specialises in bank operational management, global risk management, corporate governance, compliance and internal audit.

Benoits achievements include the overview of the mortgage industry in Poland; review of operations and AML guidelines for a central Bank in Asia; established a new Central Bank in Eastern Europe on a state of the art operational platform.

FINTECH, BLOCKCHAIN AND CRYPTO CURRENCY

LILIANA REASOR

A highly experienced senior banker, with over 20 years' experience in fintech and investment banking.

Former director and VP of JP Morgan, Bank of America, Deutsche Bank, Morgan Stanley and Moodys Analytics.

A leading International conference lecturer on Fintech, Blockchain and Cryptocurrency and regarded as one of the leading experts in this field.

Direct work experience includes M&A, Due Diligence, Portfolio Management (managed over $2Bn of Structured Credit securities for Deutsche Bank), Bank Risk Analytics and fintech development.

GREGER HAMILTON

Former Managing Director of Goldman Sachs International, with special responsibilities for Nordic and Eastern European banks, European stock exchanges and trading platforms.

Managing partner at Ovington Financial Partners, an international advisory and investment firm specialising in the banking sector.

Founding partner at European Resolution Capital Partners which was founded in autumn 2008 with a focused strategy to advice banks, financial institutions and agencies on bank restructuring and corporate transaction issues arising out of the financial- and economic crisis - founded and managed by the leading and most experienced bank restructuring experts in the industry, with significant experience in strategy, financing, valuation, restructuring, mergers and acquisitions, as well as crisis management in the banking sector.

MARK SISMEY-DURRANT

A highly experienced CEO and Board Director with a highly successful track record in the banking sector.

Former CEO of Hampshire Trust Bank, Heritable Bank, Sun Bank plc and Confederation Bank.

Holds an envious reputation for creating, growing and developing profitable banks.

THEO THEODOULOU

Chartered accountant, with over 25 years experience in the banking sector, mainly with HSBC.

Headed the Sarbanes Oxley function in Europe for HSBC and implemented the Basel 2 Project for the bank.