Focus on RegTech

Ian is Chief Operating Officer at Governance.com, responsible for their clients, the successful delivery of their product and the strategic expansion of the company’s operations. With a passion for people, change and growth, he has over 20 years of experience across a range of sectors and roles. This experience includes delivering technology, business and regulatory consulting services both client-side and as a service provider. Prior to his appointment, Ian set up and managed a technology-driven regulatory consulting service in Luxembourg.

Part of Ian’s mission today is to help redefine digital culture: How can we work more efficiently together? How can we redefine our working culture as individuals, as teams, as companies, as an industry, as a society? Follow Ian on LinkedIn to become a part of this dialogue!

Originally from the UK, Ian lives in Luxembourg with his wife, daughter and dog.

Anna is Transformation Manager at TMF Group. Anna is leading the development of a state-of-the-art, digital-first client-centric service delivery solution for Know Your Customer/Client Due Diligence across the TMF Group. Anna is responsible for the design, build, legacy data/document migration and deployment of the new solution across over 80 offices worldwide.

Anna studied International Business Management in the Netherlands. She held various professional roles prior to joining TMF, from working for a Crowdsource startup to being an assistant producer for the largest Outdoor Arts and Crafts Festival in the Pacific Northwest.

Anna is Canadian-born, raised in Vancouver. She lives in the Netherlands with her husband and two children.

Oscar Farres is Head of Digital Economy VC at the European Investment Fund (EIF) in Luxembourg, a public institution that is the largest investor in European VC funds. At EIF, Oscar and his team invest in VC funds focused on the digital transformation of the economy from seed to growth and across all European countries.

Prior to joining the EIF, Oscar developed his professional career at two VC funds investing in internet and software start-ups. Before becoming a VC investor, Oscar co-founded Kineto Project, a technology start-up in the fitness space, and Witur, an on-line marketplace for local travel experiences.

Oscar holds an Electronics Engineering degree from the Universitat Ramon Llull and an MBA degree from IESE Business School and MIT.

Chris Hollifield is head of business development at Luxembourg for Finance, where his work involves advising FinTech and financial companies looking to develop cross-border activity through Luxembourg-based platforms. He also advises on the development of the ecosystem in Luxembourg and on synergy creation with other key financial centres, with a focus on East Asia.

Prior to working at Luxembourg for Finance, Chris worked in the strategy department of Clearstream Banking SA, an International Central Securities Depository that facilitates the settlement of interbank transactions in over 50 markets worldwide. Here, his work focused particularly on strategic projects concerning distributed ledger technology and other FinTech topics.

Margot Jacquet is a Business Development Adviser at Luxembourg for Finance. She advises financial companies and FinTechs to help them expand their cross-border operations through the Grand-Duchy. Her role involves promoting Luxembourg’s financial industry internationally and fostering collaboration with other major financial centres. She focuses more specifically on developing relationships with financial hubs and companies from South-East Asia and Western Europe. 

Luca Mancuso is the Business Development Associate for the Luxembourg House of Financial Technology (LHoFT). With experience in International Affairs, Luca works to develop the LHoFT community by involving Luxembourg Fintechs in local and international initiatives that aim to promote Luxembourg as a hub for innovation, open collaboration and talent in the financial services industry.

Raoul Mulheims’ first experience in digital product building started in 1996 with Luxembourg’s largest social network named Luxusbuerg which peaked at 70’000 users. In 1999, he co-founded his first company, Nvision – a digital agency – in his final year at law school in Paris. Nvision quickly turned into one of the leading digital agencies in the country, and Raoul was a board member until April 2018. In 2006, he became the general manager of a spin-off named Mpulse which is handling over 90% of micropayments made via mobile operators. In 2009, Mpulse established a subsidiary in France. In parallel, it began to develop a new platform focusing on bank-centric mobile payments.

In 2012, Raoul became the CEO of this new venture named Digicash Payments which is running the Luxembourg banks’ mobile payment scheme. Digicash was acquired by Payconiq in 2017. Raoul then co-founded Finologee to provide platform products and APIs to the financial industry (KYC/AML, PSD2, professional payments), Today, Finologee is one of the leading FinTech/RegTech players in Luxembourg serving more than 100 banks, insurance companies and other institutions with a staff of 40.

Karen O’Sullivan is Head of the Innovation, Payments, Market Infrastructures and Governance at the CSSF.

She coordinates the activities of this department which is responsible for financial innovation, both the application process and on-going prudential supervision of payment institutions and electronic money institutions, the registration and AML supervision of virtual asset service providers, market infrastructures and the oversight of remuneration and governance practices and policies implemented within financial institutions.

Furthermore, her team is responsible for coordinating the CSSF’s efforts with regards to MiCA Regulation. In this respect her team spearheads the CSSF’s internal MiCA taskforce and is responsible for the authorisation and the prudential supervision of crypto-asset service providers and certain EMT/ART issuers.

Being the department in charge of financial innovation means that Karen and her team are the privileged contact and point of entry to the CSSF for the FinTech industry.

She represents the CSSF on an international level through participation in various working sub-groups and as speaker at several conferences, covering payment services, virtual asset and/or crypto asset service providers, innovation topics, and corporate governance matters at both national and international level.

Nicole is the Head of Digital Policy at Barclays. She focuses on the impact of FinTech and RegTech related regulation and initiatives including AI and DLT usecases (such as digital reporting, digital assets and CBDCs) and also focuses on data policy matters.  She regularly engages with policymakers globally.

Further, she represents Barclays in various regulatory and policy forums and industry groups. For example, Nicole is on the European Commission’s (EC) Expert Group on Regulatory Obstacles to Financial Innovation and GFMA’s Digital Asset Taskforce.  In addition, she represented Barclays at European Forum for Innovation Facilitators to discuss Regtech and the EC’s FinTech Lab to discuss AI.  She also presented at the Crypto-asset and Blockchain roundtable and Digital Identity roundtable at the European Parliament.

Nicole regularly speaks on panels, presents at conferences and universities and has articles published.  She was named in the FinTech Magazine ‘Top 100 Women in FinTech 2022’, the City Am Crypto Am ‘Industry Personality of the Year 2022’, Re.Work ‘Top 30 Women in Fintech’ 2021, the ‘Influencer of the Year’ at the NY Finovate Awards 2019, and the  ‘Most Influential Women in FinTech Regulation – UK’ at the Wealth and Finance Awards 2019.