Global Speakers

Bharat Panchal is working as Senior Vice President and Head – Risk Management for National Payments Corporation Of India (NPCI). He is one of the strong pillars since inception of NPCI, an umbrella organization for entire retail payments system in India. NPCI is one of the fastest grown organizations in last few years with products like RuPay, BHIM, AEPS, and IMPS etc.

At NPCI, Bharat is responsible to Monitor, evaluate and implement improvements for Risk management, controls and governance areas focusing on Enterprise Risk Management, Operational Risk Management, Cyber Security, and Fraud Management. He is responsible to design and implementation of security controls in every product of NPCI. He has established himself as cyber security thought leader for digital banking in India with his immense knowledge of risk and cyber security area and his contribution to make the ecosystem risk free. He is part of many committees of Govt. of India and RBI on cyber security.

He is an MBA in Information systems and has around 22 + years’ experience mainly in the banking and telecommunication industry. He is one of the most sought speaker on cyber security in India. He has been keynote speaker or panelist in around 250 + conferences in India and almost 20+ conferences across world. He is winner of many prestigious awards including “Security Leader of the year” by DSCI in 2014     and “Best CRO of the year” by CSI in 2016.

Patrick Burns is the Head of Integrated Intelligence and Investigations for Standard Chartered Bank ASEAN & South Asia (ASA) Region. He is responsible for developing proactive intelligence to identify and mitigate risk as well resolving major cases with global impact to SCB’s risk profile. Patrick has been in legal and compliance within the financial services industry for more than 10 years, with experience implementing regulatory change in the AML space and large-scale detection systems in both North America and Asia Pacific. With a current focus on proactive intelligence-led detection for SCB, he develops tools and practices to de-risk through focused analytics and targeted investigations. Prior to joining SCB he worked with JPMorgan in New York and Singapore implementing and streamlining new AML detection systems. Patrick received a JD in Law from The University of DePaul in Chicago, USA and a MBA in International Finance from the University of Cape Town, South Africa.

Vishal is the Head of Fraud & Investigations at Microsoft’s Asia headquarters, managing a team of 17 fraud and investigative experts across Asia. He owns the Fraud Risk Management Programme and champions the definition of a global anti-fraud strategic roadmap, identifying and implementing cost effective fraud deterrent, prevention, detection and response (investigation and remediation) mechanisms and controls.
Prior to Microsoft, Vishal was the Head of Financial Crime & Compliance at Credit Suisse where he managed a team responsible for investigations arising from transaction surveillance, adverse media alerts, internal Suspicious Activity Reports and Quality Assurance reviews, as well as dealing with sanctions, fraud and anti-bribery issues.
He has extensive international leadership experience in Private Banking, Fraud & Investigations, Financial Crime Compliance and Risk Management, holding various roles in large corporations such as General Electric, among others.

A/Prof Carol Hargreaves is the Director of the Data Analytics Consulting Centre at the National University of Singapore. Prof Hargreaves has a joint position in the Department of Mathematics & the Department of Statistics & Applied Probability. Her role includes providing data analytics advisory & consulting services to industry, designing and teaching data analytics executive training courses for industry professionals, and is a noted keynote conference speaker and moderator.

Prof Hargreaves has a passion for solving business problems using analytics and machine learning techniques to build data driven solutions for growth and effective decision-making. She aims to provide her clients with organic revenue growth, allowing business processes to become smarter and faster while keeping customers engaged.

Prof Hargreaves is an analytics and business intelligence professional with over 28 years analytics experience, with leading roles in the pharmaceutical, healthcare & fast moving consumer goods and education industries. Prof Hargreaves has worked with a variety of leading companies to make businesses more intelligent. These include Pfizer, Novartis, Merck Sharp & Dohme, Nestle, MasterFoods, Goodman Fielder, Foxtel, Aztec (IRI), Cegedim Strategic Data (Quintiles), National Health & Medical Research Council, National University of Singapore.

Sam is Director of the Deloitte Southeast Asia Innovation Team, an innovation unit that accelerates new products and services, builds new capabilities, and enables open innovation for Deloitte and our clients.

Sam’s experience spans the strategies and tactics of new business ventures and organisational transformation – seeking balance between innovation, risk, and sustainability.

In this context, negotiating the opportunities and challenges posed by digital disruption for the professional services sectors are a focus of work, with current projects centred on technology foresight, open innovation, and risk management.

In the field of Innovation, Sam works on…

• Digital transformation, focussing on cognitive technologies and analytics
• Seeding and enabling innovation cultures through new skills and relationships
• Gearing new ventures and new collaborations for growth and resilience

In this work, Sam draws on a diverse range of past experiences, with past roles including: innovation consultant, lecturer in digital innovation and analytics (National University of Singapore), economist specialising in innovation investment, chemical engineer, and biomedical researcher.

Martin Markiewicz is the CEO and co-founder of Silent Eight. Based in Singapore, he is the creator of the long-term vision and the driving force behind the company’s pursuit of artificial intelligence powered solutions for client screening and transaction monitoring. The solutions of Silent Eight are utilized by leading banks for AML and CFT purposes.

Martin is a mathematician by education, and a serial entrepreneur by passion, with strong startups (in both Europe and Asia) and a successful IPO.  He has over 16 years of experience with software and artificial intelligence solutions covering a wide range of applications. His first startup, konsultant.it, was established in 2001 and offered software & hardware development solutions for SME’s. He then joined Wola Info, one of Europe’s leading IT firms, as a strategic sales director, and went on to create SevenFlow Investments – a multidisciplinary engineering firm that grew quickly, ultimately becoming a part of a highly successful IPO.

Matt is an international technology, media and telecoms lawyer and a Partner at CMS, a leading international law firm. He advises clients from startups to global tech, telecoms and media companies and governments on business and law in Asia. His practice spans commercial, transactional, regulatory and intellectual property advice across tech, media and telecoms, including content regulation, e-commerce, cloud, data, cybersecurity, payments, apps, adtech, IoT and complex sourcing and supply chain transactions.

Matt is also a Director of the International Institute of Communications in Singapore. He regularly appears on TV and in print media, including BBC World News, Channel News Asia, Wall Street Journal, Mashable and The Straits Times, to discuss the tech/media/telecoms sectors.

His blog, www.connectedasia.com, discusses how the unparalleled and explosive growth in connectivity in Asia-Pacific is driving new technologies and business models and creating new legal and commercial challenges.

Anu brings 17 years of experience across Risk & Compliance management, Governance, Regulatory, Internal Audit, Management Consulting and Tax. She has worked across many industries: Insurance, Bank, Government, Manufacturing, Energy and Telecommunications.

Anu has assisted clients and worked hands-on in industry to identify risks and build solutions to manage them across all types of financial and non- financial risks. The work Anu and her team did around advanced risk management was awarded an Australian Bank CEO Employee of the year award.

Anu is currently focussed on Risk Innovation, assisting businesses through designing and developing new business risk & compliance solutions to support their future business needs.

Anu is a graduate from Australian Institute of Company Directors (AICD), a Chartered Accountant (ICAANZ) and holds a Bachelor of Commerce in Accounting and Information Systems (UNSW).

Bobby Thomas currently Heads Risk Analytics function at Prudential Assurance Company Singapore. He is also responsible for driving Digitalization for Risk Prevention, mitigation and Control at Prudential.

Bobby comes with 18 years of rich Industry experience within the BFSI sector especially within Life Insurance. He is known industry leader and is extremely passionate about Risk Management as a domain. He specializes in Operational Risk and is extremely driven about using Technology for Risk Mitigation / Prevention

As far as his education goes, he is an

• MBA
• PG in Enterprise Risk Management
• PG in Cyber Laws
• PG in Intellectual Property Risks and Laws

Bobby has been a regular speaker at all major institutes of Law Enforcement (especially Police) on lectures on Financial Crimes in the Insurance Industry. In his previous role in India, he has been leading various industry level initiatives within Life and General Insurance space.

Philippe currently focused on building and financing AI ventures enabling digital transformation. Previously, he financed corporate, financial institutions and commercial clients as head of Institutional banking at ANZ or at co-head of Wholesale Bank at Standard chartered. Before banking, he was in telecoms and tech where he designed VLSI chip, launched Wharf T&T Telco in HK or TT&C operations for F2 satellite….he has Masters of Science from Ecole Polytechnique, Telecom ParisTech & Columbia University. Focused on building great team to grow top line (5 fold growth to $1 Billion as co-head of Wholesale Bank), transforming or restructuring businesses winning with clients ( #1-Greenwich survey at ANZ) and with people (Top100 UK best place to work at CapitalOne)

Markus has over 20 years’ experience in research and technology-driven innovation. His career spans across academia, dedicated research canters as well as industrial research and incubation labs (including NUS, A*STAR, HP Labs, Visa Labs and various start-ups). He has extensive experience in payments analytics & processing (at extreme scale) and risk management (compromise & fraud detection and prediction).

Nirupam Sannagowdara Dasappa is an Engineering Leader with 18+ years of global executive experience in Internet of Things (IoT), Cloud computing, Data analytics, Visual Computing, Automotive Telematics, Smart cities. Focus on Design Strategy, Innovation, New business development/Expansion, Commercial strategies, Presales, Thought leadership, Joint ventures and Public private partnership (PPP). Built start-up ventures, successful IoT operation, IoT platforms, IoT products from scratch. Serves as chief ICT architect and chief instrumentation expert for ICT driven future (smart) cities and on not-for-profit boards. Nirupam is an expert in the IoT space, leading successive generations of remote connectivity platforms and solutions, playing key roles in designing, evangelizing, and realizing innovative connected product solutions, successful deployment of connected products in the marketplace.  Nirupam built robust IoT platform, has proven capability to connect and analyse over trillions of data events and devices. Enterprise Grade Fleet Management Platform, IoT for railway transport. Intelligent Video Surveillance Platform. Smart Homes. Plug & Sense Platform for Smart cities. IoT deployment in Energy, Mobility, Climate, Retails/Financial Services, Maritime, FMCG, Oil Gas, Manufacturing. Wearable devices, Industrial Gateways

Data geek and AI enthusiast with experience spanning med-, ad- and insur-tech. A strong believer that technology can drive the world to be a better place, Wan Ting recognizes the importance of diversity in this digital revolution and strives towards the day where everyone feels empowered in STEM.

Andreas is a Director in the Data & Analytics practice at PwC Singapore covering Financial Services.

He advises banks, asset managers, insurance companies and regulators on how to use data and analytics to generate business value, understand market trends and client needs, strengthen controls and improve operational performance.

This includes the design and implementation of governance and control models, big data architecture and robotic process automation.

With a team of data scientists he helps clients to uncover valuable insights from large sets of structured and unstructured data using statistical algorithms, visualisation and machine learning.

He has more than 15 years of experience in private, corporate and investment banking both as external consultant and as internal line, risk and program manager.

Claudio Caballero is Director of Product Innovation at IAG Firemark in Singapore. Claudio has led technology teams for over 20 years, in both startups and the Fortune 50. An early adopter in applying AI, Claudio first used neural networks to process machine vision data in 1990.

Last in Singapore as Director of Engineering in a robotics startup in the late 90s, he returned to his native New York City, where he began using Agile methodologies to lead the delivery of software systems.

Comfortable in both hackathons and board rooms, Claudio has advised PE firms on technology strategy for portfolio companies and prospective deals, but still codes on occasion and has been championing digital transformation using public clouds and DevOps for nearly a decade.

Claudio received a Global Executive MBA from INSEAD Singapore in 2016 after leading two global software projects for an MNC with operations in Thailand.

Sandeep is a technology and innovation professional having over 12 years of experience in Banking Domain in requirements elicitation, design and implementation of technology solutions, infrastructure support, IT due diligence and service transitions. Sandeep has proficiency in various technologies starting from the legacy platforms to newest AI related technologies. He is a certified SAS professional and a Python Gig with expertise in Standard Reporting, Data Query, Data Visualization, Descriptive Statistics, Data Mining Forecasting, Predictive Modeling, Simulation Decision Analysis, and Optimization. 

Sanjay has more than 20 years of experience in public accounting in Singapore and Hong Kong in the audits of multinationals and local companies in a number of industries including those listed in Singapore and Hong Kong.

His extensive experience spans across a number of industries. As the Audit Leader for the Life Science & Healthcare (LSHC) sector, he primarily serves clients in the LSHC industry, followed by Real Estate (RE) and Energy & Resources (E&R) sectors.

He also leads Audit Analytics for Deloitte Southeast Asia (SEA) and represents the Singapore practice on the Deloitte Global Audit & Assurance Innovation Network.  He also chairs the Data Analytics Sub-Committee in ISCA.

He is a regular speaker at public seminars on accounting technical updates and leads similar sessions for his clients customized to their business and industry.

Prof Yu Chien Siang is the Chief Innovation & Trust Officer for Amaris AI, an AI startup that offers full stack AI as a service. He was the Chief Innovation Officer (CIO) of a department in the Ministry of Home Affairs and later of Certis Cisco. In this role, he pioneered and developed new AI systems, i.e. embedded AI for low power and low cost edge systems, led a Malware and IoT Security Lab, as well as a Robotics and Drones Lab. Prior to this, he was the most senior Computer Security Consultant at the Singapore government. He was awarded the Carl Duisberg Gesellschaft Scholarship to pursue his studies at a German university and graduated as a Data Systems Engineer. During his study, he received training at the Siemens Research Laboratory and IBM R&D Laboratory in Boblingen. He has been working in the Civil Service since 1981 and was awarded National Day Honours, the Public Administration Medal (Silver) in 1993 and (Silver) Bar in 2004. He was also given the Cyber Security Hall of Fame in 2018, an inaugural professional category award from AISP and supported by the Cyber Security Agency.
He has been active in the fields of IT leadership, innovation development and its related cultural transformation and IT Security for more than 30 years. During this time, he led numerous national-level IT projects in information security such as the Electronic Road Pricing (ERP), Standard Operating Environment (SOE) etc., IoT security via the ANSES project and homeland security, developing workflow and people identification operational systems. He was instrumental in evolving many advanced systems architecture used in the public service and the fundamental mechanisms required for their large systems rollout. He invented unique low cost smart card readers, strong cryptographic systems, more efficient protocols and fault tolerant designs. He was also a pioneer in robotics cum drone and AI hacking and new ideas like adaptive security (Liquid Defence) and Security by Design.
In addition, he is teaching a series of AI courses, titled Eureka!AI for C-suite and modern cyber security for CISOs at NUS and the undergraduate course on “Introduction to Cyber Crime”, but now renamed as “Introduction to Cyber Security” in his capacity as Adjunct Associate Professor at the Department of Mathematics of the National University of Singapore. He was an ex-President of the Singapore Microcomputer Society, a pioneer in the exploitation of microcomputers and a regular speaker at government events, being the founder of the Governmentware show. He has also been one of the judges for the RSA Innovation Sandbox since 2014. He is currently a member of ITSC, worked on ISO security standards and was involved in the early days of the AISP.

Jimmy is the co-founder and CEO of Untangle AI, a Singapore based company focused on the understanding, explaining, optimising and auditing deep learning models. With the recent explosion of AI, which has been driven by deep learning, the need to understand model’s decisions is really coming to the fore. Untangle AI are building a platform to allow developers, companies and end users understand the decisions AIs make. With these understandings companies can then optimise models, remove bias and Harden them against attacks.

 Jimmy completed his PhD in data interpretation and machine learning from the University of Manchester, focusing on classification, multivariate statistics, data interpretation and visualisation. Jimmy has worked as a machine learning expert at IMSRV for facial expression recognition. He has also led teams as Director of Applications at iQNECT, building the best in class real time AI systems for image and video analysis. He has also consulted in big data and AI for companies throughout Asia.

Mr John Teo was the chief financial officer of Singapore Pools for over 14 years.  He assumed the appointment as its chief risk officer since June 2017.
 
He has held senior finance appointments in several industry sectors, and was previously Managing Director, Finance in Temasek Holdings Pte Ltd, Chief Financial Officer of the National University Hospital and Audit Manager in Price Waterhouse, Singapore. He is a board member of a community hospital and serves on the management committee of several non-profit community organisations in Singapore.  

Eric Tham is a senior lecturer at the National University of Singapore. Previously, he was an enterprise data scientist at Thomson Reuters, and led the quantitative data science team in a Chinese Fintech startup with five million users. He has over 15 years of experience in the financial industry in risk management, quantitative development, and energy economics with banks and oil companies.

He blends keen understanding of financial theory from a Phd in Finance with data science techniques which he teaches in the university. He is a frequent speaker at conferences and contributed a chapter to the Handbook of Sentiment Analysis in Finance and a predictive analytics journal paper.