Dr Michael Salmony
Dr Michael Salmony is Executive Adviser to the Board at equensWorldline SE, Europe’s leader in financial processing and transactional services, which processes over 17 trillion Euro per year. He is an internationally recognised leader on strategy of business innovations in digital and financial services.
He is board-level advisor to major European banks, industry associations and European finance bodies. He regularly helps shape future directions in European decision making bodies e.g. European Commission, EPC, ERPB, and further national and international boards.
His views are much in demand as keynote speaker at international events and he appears on TV/Radio/all electronic media on advances in finance and is quoted extensively (e.g. Financial Times, Harvard Business Manager, New Scientist, The Economist and by business schools and governments from Ghana to Malaysia). He has published much own original work which has been translated into many languages including German, Italian, Dutch, Finnish, Polish, Danish, Russian, Chinese and Japanese.
Previous positions include Director Business Development of leading national central bank (Bank of the Year, Best Innovator Award).
Before entering the world of finance, he was instrumental in setting up IBM’s European Network Centre for the convergence of IT, telecommunications and media and helped transform companies and business models in many industries (publishing, TV/radio, utilities, national rail, etc.) as IBM’s Director of Market Development Media and Communications Technologies.
He studied at the University of Cambridge and is married with two millennial children.
Katarzyna Kobylińska-Hilliard
Katarzyna is a Policy Officer in the Retail Financial Services Unit at the European Commission, Directorate General for Financial Stability, Financial Services and Capital Markets Union.
Prior to that, she was responsible for corporate governance in financial institutions at the Directorate General Justice and Consumers. Katarzyna also has experience in the private sector working on retail financial services and prudential supervision of banks, as well as in a consumer advocacy organisation.
Frederick Liu
Frederick Liu is Vice President at Visa Inc. and recently moved to London to focus on new product development for PSD2. Prior to this role, he was responsible for launching new Identity and Risk Products globally. These solutions span fraud risk, credit risk, and mobile banking APIs that have been deployed to clients in more than 200 countries worldwide.
He has over 15 years of experience in payments covering strategy, authentication, fraud risk, business intelligence, machine learning model development, and customer-centric product design.
Before joining Visa, Frederick was a data architect at IBM Global Services, and a consultant with Ernst and Young, where he managed large-scale e-commerce application development for global companies. Fred holds a B.S. degree in Accounting and International Business from the University of Washington in Seattle.
Prof. dr Jürgen Bott
Prof. Dr. Jürgen Bott is professor of finance management at the University of Applied Sciences in Kaiserslautern. As visiting professor and guest lecturer he keeps relations with several other Universities and Business Schools, i.e. IESE in Barcelona or UAM in Madrid.
He studied business administration at the Julius Echter University of Würzburg as well as Statistics and Operations Research at the Cornell University (New York). He received his doctorate degree from the Goethe University of Frankfurt.
Before he started his academic career as a professor, he gained working experience with J. P. Morgan (New York and Frankfurt), the Deutsche Bundesbank and McKinsey & Company. He keeps close contact with the financial industry as member of advisory and supervisory boards as well as consulting projects for banks, bank customers and international organisations. He is speaks and chairs several national and international conferences on operational banking (e.g. Euro Finance Week, Handelsblatt-Jahrestagung Banken- Technologie).
Internationally he has been enrolled in projects e.g. of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the European Commission (EC). He is academic advisor to the EC helping to prepare legislative acts or policy initiatives on banking issues (e.g. academic advisor in PSMEG).
Dariusz Mazurkiewicz
President of the Management Board in the Polish Payment Standard – BLIK System operator. Mr Mazurkiewicz previously served as the Vice President of the Management Board responsible for product and business development.
Between 2010 and 2014 he was working for SkyCash Poland SA, where he was the President of the Board and led this innovative remote mobile payment services’ provider to the position of market leader in Poland. In 2008-2010 he was the President of the Management Board at Bauer-Weltbild Media, developing multichannel sales in media segment. Between 2006 and 2008 he was the Vice President of the Management Board and Chief Financial Officer of Interia.pl SA in Cracow. From 2002 to 2006 he held positions in finance – as a Financial Controller and then Finance Director at Michelin Group headquarters in France.
He is a graduate of financial management at the Academy of Economics in Katowice and the Silesian International Business School. He has experience in corporate finance, e-commerce and direct marketing.
Dr Michał Szymański
Since joining the Krajowa Izba Rozliczeniowa S.A. in 1995, where he is currently a Vice President of the Management Board, Michal’s career has been linked to business development, strategy and both the practical and theoretical aspects of payment systems. His achievements include the successful introduction of the settlement finality project (2004), and establishing a local clearing/STEP2 connection through the implementation of the EuroELIXIR system (2005). In 2002, he obtained a Ph.D. at the Warsaw School of Economics.
Dr Michał Grabowski
Michał Grabowski, Ph.D., attorney at law, owner at Law Firm specialising in banking and payment services law. His professional experience includes working at the Government (Chancellery of Prime Ministers), polish and international law firms, banks and business entities. Author of the first Commentary on the Polish Payment Services Act, Monograph – Payment Instruments, co-author of the Banking Law. Commentary and several articles concerning payment services, new technologies and banking.
Krzysztof Grzeszczuk
Krzysztof Grzeszczuk is the Head of Open Banking at Alior Bank responsible for APIs, developer portal and sandbox. In his previous role he was the Innovation Lead in a global team based in New York, Singapore and Warsaw exploring digital innovation for Citi. As Global Emerging Capabilities Head he was one of the key members and drivers in an ad-hoc co-located team in New York and California that made Citi the world’s first Apple Watch banking app (design-thinking driven collaboration with IBM iX and Apple). Also one of only 10 members of an elite team with a mission to define the vision of the Bank of the Future for Citi’s global consumer organisation. The recommendations were adopted and endorsed by Citi Retail Bank leadership. His earlier work for Citi Handlowy included one of the first mobile banking applications in Poland for iOS and Android. His earlier roles included Cards Technology, Cards Operations and Customer Service management.
Prof. dr Malte Krueger
Malte Krueger is Professor of Economics at the University of Applied Sciences in Aschaffenburg (Germany) and works as a consultant for PaySys Consultancy (Frankfurt). He holds a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Cologne (Germany) and has worked as a research fellow for the Bank of Spain, the University of Western Ontario, the University of Durham, the University of Karlsruhe, the University of Applied Sciences in Frankfurt and the European Commission.
Consulting projects have focused on payments – including internet payments – and the list of clients includes banks, processors, merchants, card schemes, payment service providers, government institutions and others, in Germany and other European countries. Academic research has focused on payments in general, two-sided markets, monetary economics and exchange rates. Malte has published widely in academic and industry journal.
Dr Jakub Górka
Jakub Górka holds a PhD in economics and works at the Faculty of Management, University of Warsaw, Poland. He is a member of the Payment Systems Market Expert Group (PSMEG), assisting the European Commission to prepare legislative acts or policy initiatives on payment issues, and an advisor to the President of Social Insurance Institution (ZUS) in Poland on FinTech.
Jakub is an author and editor of numerous research papers and books, including Interchange Fee Economics. To Regulate or Not to Regulate? (2018) and Transforming Payment Systems in Europe (2016). He has provided expert advice for the National Bank of Poland, the Polish Ministry of Finance, and companies within the payments industry. He also founded the Payments Drift Forum. In the years 2016–17 he was leading the stream “e-Taxes” in the Polish government programme “From paper to digital Poland”. He has been distinguished with several awards, including an award from the Polish Prime Minister for his doctoral thesis.
Roeland Van der Stappen
Roeland Van der Stappen is Head of Regulatory Affairs for Europe at Visa since November 2018. Based in Brussels, he coordinates Visa Europe’s approach to EU regulatory and policy discussions, shaping outreach and advocacy strategy in Brussels and in the region.
Roeland has been working in the financial sector for more than 10 years. Prior to joining Visa, Roeland served as Vice President of Government Policy and Public Relations at Barclays. In that role, he has been an active contributor on digital banking/ FinTech issues in various EU trade associations and platforms.
Lajos Bartha
Lajos Bartha is currently Executive Director for Financial Infrastructures and Banking Operations in the Magyar Nemzeti Bank (the central bank of Hungary) where previously he led the Directorate Financial Infrastructures between 2007 and 2017. The executive directorate is responsible for regulation and supervision of payment services, oversight of clearing and settlement systems, and operation of the Bank’s back office including its RTGS system.
It plays an active role in the development of the Hungarian payment and securities clearing and settlement infrastructures.He is the member of the ESCB Market Infrastructures and Payments Committee, chairman of the Hungarian CSD’s (KELER Zrt) supervisory board and member of the supervisory boards of the Hungarian Stock Exchange (BÉT Zrt) and of the Hungarian Automated Clearing house (GIRO Zrt). He has been working for Magyar Nemzeti Bank since 1998 and has held different positions in the financial infrastructures directorate. Before joining Magyar Nemzeti Bank, he worked for Arthur Andersen, the Hungarian State Holding Company, a commercial bank and in DG Payments Systems in the European Central Bank. He received his master’s degree in economics from the Budapest University of Economics in 1992.
Daniel Wicher
He graduated from the University of Economics in Cracow and completed MBA studies for Financiers at the Koźmiński University in Warsaw.
He has been professionally involved in the card payments industry for 11 years. Throughout this period he has worked for First Data Polska S.A. His career in card payments business started in Credit & Risk Department. Next, between 2013-2018 he served as a Senior Financial Analyst & Pricing Expert, being responsible for the cost analysis of Interchange Fees and Scheme Fees on the Polish market, as well as for setting the pricing policy at First Data Polska for acquiring services. From January 2019, he took over a role of the leader in the pricing policy management for acquiring business at First Data for the Polish market.
Privately, passionate about football and cycling. Married, father of two children.
Dr Carlotta Mariotto
Carlotta is currently an economic analyst at the Chief Economist Team of the Directorate General for Competition at the European Commission. She regularly provides economic guidance to the antitrust unit for payment systems and has recently contributed to the antitrust case on Visa and MasterCard inter-regional interchange fees. Carlotta holds a PhD in Industrial Economics from Mines-Paristech in Paris, and has dedicated part of her research to retail banking and in particular to the role of interchange fees in payment markets.
Paweł Jaroszek
Since January 2014, Member of the Management Board supervising the Finance and Realization of Income Division for ensuring the financial liquidity of the Social Insurance Fund and managing the assets of the Demographic Reserve Fund . The titular auditor of the ISSA Control Committee and the vice-chairman of the ISSA Technical Committee on the collection of social security contributions, as well as the Chairman of the Steering Committee within the framework of the European ISSA Network (IEN).
Responsible for the implementation of the e-contribution project at ZUS.
He started his professional career at the Treasury Department of Bank Energetyki SA. He joined the Social Insurance Institution in 1999, initially as the Head of the Unit, then he took the position of Deputy Director and Director of the Department. During 2008-2010, Member of the Management Board of the National Capital Fund SA. A specialist in finance. He holds economics and law degrees. He has also completed postgraduate managerial and financial studies in the area of financial and management accounting. PhD student in the Doctoral Program in Management and Economics at the Warsaw School of Economics.
Dr Periklis Thivaios
Periklis has a doctoral degree in Finance from IE Business School in Spain (with Distinction Cum Laude) and a Masters degree from the London School of Economics (with Distinction). His experience transcends finance, risk, and strategy for financial institutions (banks and insurance firms) across Europe, North America and Africa where he lived and worked for 18 years in 7 different cities.
Periklis was lecturing Counterparty Credit Risk and XVA at the department of Computational and Applied Mathematics, University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa and is currently an external lecturer and supervisor for the Department of Actuarial Science at the University of Cape Town, as well as a visiting lecturer at CESA in Colombia. He is a mentor for a number of ‘fintech’ startups at global financial accelerators and an active contributor to international conferences, research projects and publications. He is a Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) and an accredited Financial Risk Manager (FRM).
Dr Udo Milkau
Dr Udo Milkau is Chief Digital Officer, Transaction Banking of DZ BANK, central bank of the co-oprerative banking sector in Germany.
After his academic education in physics he worked as a research scientist in large collaborations and performed experiments at different European research centers incl. CERN, CEA de Saclay, and GSI. Afterwards he joint a mechatronic manufacturer and was responsible for automotive clients in East Asia and Europe. He hold different management positions in consulting firms for more than a decade. He is chairman of the European Association of Co-operative Banks (EACB) Digital and Data Working Group, member of the EACB Payment Services Working Group and member of the European Central Bank’s Operation Managers Group (ECB OMG).
He talked at international conferences and authored papers on payments strategy, transaction banking, operational risk management and risk culture, development of digital platforms and distributed ledger technology. He lectured i.a. at Goethe University Frankfurt am Main, Frankfurt School of Finance and Management and WHU – Otto Beisheim School of Management (Vallendar). He is a member of the editorial board of the Journal of Digital Banking.