Fintech 2020

Steve Purser was born in the UK and currently has joint UK and Belgian nationality. He attended the universities of Bristol and East Anglia where he obtained a BSc. in Chemistry and a PhD in Chemical Physics respectively. He started work in 1985 in the area of software development and systems integration, subsequently progressing to project management and consultancy roles. From 1993 to 2008, he occupied the role of Chief Information Security Officer for a number of financial institutions. He joined ENISA in December 2008 and is currently responsible for all operational activities of the Agency.

Steve is currently a member of several Steering Boards and Advisory Committees, including notably the Steering Board of the CERT EU, the Programme Board of the EU Cyber Crime Centre and the Euro Cyber Resilience Board. In the area of standards, he is the ENISA representative on the ISO SC 27 working group. As Head of Core Operations, he regularly represents ENISA in international conferences on information security.

He was a co-founder of the ‘Club de Securité des Systèmes Informatiques au Luxembourg’ (CLUSSIL) and has frequently published articles in the specialised press. He is also the author of ‘A Practical Guide to Managing Information Security’ (Artech House, 2004).

Steven Maijoor has been the Chair of the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) since April 2011. He is the first chair of the Authority and is currently serving his second five-year term. He is responsible for representing the Authority as well as chairing ESMA’s Board of Supervisors and the Management Board.  The role of the Board of Supervisors is to give strategic guidance to ESMA and make all main regulatory and supervisory decisions. The Management Board’s purpose is to ensure that the Authority carries out its mission and performs its tasks.

Prior to taking up this role, Steven was Managing Director at the AFM, the Dutch financial markets regulator, where he was responsible for capital market supervision, including financial reporting and auditing, prospectuses, public offerings, and the supervision of the integrity of financial markets.

Before joining the regulatory world, Steven was the Dean of the School of Business and Economics at Maastricht University, and had pursued a long career in academia, which included a variety of positions at Maastricht University and the University of Southern California.

He holds a PhD in Business Economics from Maastricht University, was a research student at the London School of Economics, and has a master in Business Economics from the University of Groningen.

Slavka Eley was appointed Head of the Supervisory Convergence Unit within at the EBA in February 2013. She has been responsible for the EBA’s work on the common EU supervisory policy and convergence, including IT risks, outsourcing to cloud and risks related to financial innovation, efficient supervisory cooperation, recovery planning and the early intervention framework. Since 1 March 2018 she is the Unit Banking Markets, Innovation and Products, which has a leading role in the EBA Fin Tech work.

She chaired different working groups at the EBA as Sub-group on Risk Assessment Systems mandated to develop the common SREP framework. Currently she chairs the Sub-group on Supervisory Effectiveness and Convergence.

Prior to joining the EBA Slavka worked for the National Bank of Slovakia where she held a number of roles in supervision and prudential policy.

She holds a MBA in general management from the City University of Seattle and a Master degree in Mathematics, Physics and Education from the Comenius University Bratislava.

Sabrina joined LSEG in January 2019 prior to joining Sabrina was Group CISO for four years, at Equiniti, where she set up and matured its Group Security function and delivered a transformation programme.

Prior to that she held senior roles at AXA Group and VISA EMEA managing Security and Risk.

She actively participates in ISO standard drafting activities, currently serving as Vice Chair of IST33/1, the UK Mirror Committee of ISO/IEC SC27/WG1, and the Editor for the revision of ISO/IEC 27002:2013. She is a guest lecturer for the MSC in Information Security at Royal Holloway, University of London.

Sabrina has an MSc. Information Security from Royall Holloway, University of London.

Sharon S. Yang is the Deputy Assistant Secretary for International Financial Markets in the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of International Affairs. Sharon heads a team of international economists and financial analysts responsible for addressing a wide range of international financial policy issues, including advocating U.S. financial regulatory interests in multilateral forums such as the Financial Stability Board, G7 and G20, bilaterally through formal dialogues with international counterparts in Europe and Asia, and by assessing potential systemic financial risk in key international financial markets. Sharon is currently Treasury’s representative at the FSB’s Standing Committee on Supervisory and Regulatory Cooperation, Standards Implementation, Resolution Steering Group, Surveillance Framework Group, and Regional Consultative Group for the Americas. She also co-chairs the current G7 workstreams on digital assets and data governance. Sharon was previously the Director of the Office of International Financial Markets and in Treasury’s Office of the General Counsel. She is the recipient of the 2017 Legal Team of the Year award for her work on financial regulation and of the Treasury 2016 Special Act award for her work on China.

Sharon’s work at Treasury builds on 15 years’ private sector financial regulatory, strategy and legal experience, including as in-house counsel and in private practice in New York. Sharon began her career as a management consultant, where she advised Fortune 500 companies on corporate strategy. Sharon holds a Juris Doctorate from the Georgetown University Law Center and is a graduate of the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.

Siân is a regulatory policy consultant focusing on cryptoassets and distributed ledger technology, advising public and private sector organisations, and providing policy support to EU, UK and Gibraltar officials and parliamentarians. She also leads the European Digital Currency and Blockchain Technology Forum, a public policy platform helping EU policymakers and legislators shape sound policy and regulation.

From November 2017 to August 2019, Siân was seconded to the Gibraltar Financial Services Commission as Senior Adviser on DLT, having previously architected Gibraltar’s DLT regulatory framework. She is now senior partner of xReg LLP and a director of xReg Consulting Ltd and COINsult Ltd.

Siân is a member of ISO’s technical committee on DLT and sat as an expert on several of its working groups. She also sits on BSI’s national mirror committee, the Financial Markets Law Committee Fintech Scoping Forum and, until July 2019, was a delegate and technical expert on the Financial Action Task Force’s Policy Development Group on virtual assets. She is convenor and co-lead of the Joint Working Group on interVASP Messaging Standards.

Siân helped found the first publicly-quoted blockchain technology company and the first blockchain platform provider on the UK Government’s G-Cloud.

Her 48-year career in information technology, security, data protection and compliance includes working in Europe, the Middle East and Asia in industries as diverse as banking, transport, healthcare, pharmaceuticals and security.