Colm Lyon, CEO and founder of fire.com
Colm is the CEO and founder of fire.com. Fire help businesses to manage their payments with digital accounts and debit cards, that support a range of payment services that are accessible via a powerful API. Regulated since 2010, fire.com has over 3,000 business clients using its services. In addition to offering sterling and euro accounts & cards, fire.com is also authorised as a payment initiation provider under PSD2 and is a member of the Open Banking ecosystem in the UK. Colm also founded Realex Payments, which was acquired in March 2015 by Global Payments. From 2000 to 2015, Colm led Realex Payments to be one of Europe’s largest online payment gateways, processing in excess of €28B euro per annum in online payments for over 12,500 retailers, including some of the world’s leading brands. Colm was appointed to the UK Finance Payments, Products & Services Board in July 2018, where he represents the interest of non-bank financial institutions and acts as Chair of the fintech community group. He has received many awards and held several industry leadership positions, including chairman of the Irish Internet Association, founder of Payments Ireland and co-founder & chairman of the Fintech and Payments Association of Ireland. Colm is an adjunct professor for University College Cork and a member of the International Advisory Board of the Innovation Academy in University College Dublin.
Derek F. Butler, Chief Executive, Grid Finance
Derek is an experienced executive with a passion for leading the development of new and existing businesses and social enterprises-often with diverse teams in complex operating environments. He has a broad range of skills from financial management and corporate finance to change and general management which have been developed and applied over 12 years working in a variety of organisations across the globe.
Keith Grose, Group Head, Plaid UK
Keith Grose is the Head of UK for Plaid, a data network that powers the fintech tools millions of consumers rely on to live healthier financial lives. In his role, Keith leads the strategy and operations for Plaid’s UK products. Keith joined Plaid from Google, where he scaled hardware efforts with Pixel phones and Google Home speakers, and helped run business strategy for some of the company’s new technology bets, including Google Pay and virtual reality. Prior to Google, Keith began his career as a management consultant at Bain & Company.
Garvan Callan, Founder, ONEZEROONE
Garvan, through his advisory practice, is working with a diverse range of clients to enable their business leaders to develop and execute ambitious strategies with particular focus on commercial, customer and cultural strategies. By combining 16 years of executive experience across strategy execution, transformation, digital enablement and innovation with a proven track record of 10 years in customer, sales and service management he brings fresh perspectives, ambitious thinking and transformational change management to your dynamic market and organisational challenges. Garvan is a strong learning advocate having spent over 10 years as a Council member of the Institute of Banking and completing numerous educational opportunities including executive programmes at IMI, IMD, Harvard Business School, Oxford Said Business School and Singularity University.
Professor Philip O’Reilly, f Financial Technologies and Information Systems, Cork University Business School, University College Cork (UCC).
Philip is the Science Foundation Ireland (SFI) approved Principal Investigator of FINTECHNEXT, a multi-year, multi-million euro research collaboration between UCC and Fexco. Philip has been conferred with the title of Senior Visiting Fellow in the University of New South Wales (UNSW) Business School, whose Information Systems & Technology Management group is ranked 4th in the world by the AIS for publications in the top eight journals in the Information Systems field. Philip’s research focuses on the transformative power of emerging information systems on Financial Services. His work has been published in leading journals in the information systems field including the European Journal of Information Systems (EJIS), Journal of Information Technology (JIT), Journal of Strategic Information Systems (JSIS) and Information Technology and People (IT&P). Furthermore, his work has been presented at the leading information systems conferences in the world.
In 2011, Philip received the Stafford Beer Medal in recognition of the most outstanding contribution to the philosophy, theory, and practice of Information Systems (IS) from the Operational Research (OR) Society at an Awards Ceremony which took place at the Royal Society, London. Philip has been invited to deliver keynotes and workshops by numerous multinational companies and at leading practitioner events worldwide. Philip is a Senior Cutter Consultant, being a member of an elite group of 100 international leading experts, and presents regularly to leading international bodies on Fintech. Among others, he has presented to the Board of the Federal Reserve, Washington, the International Monetary Fund and the Board of the Federation of International Banks in Ireland on Fintech. The impact of Philip’s research on the industry is illustrated in the fact that since 2016, Philip has secured €4m to support his research
Elaine Deehan, Country Manager of Ireland, Starling International
After a career in traditional institutions such as Citi and AIB, Elaine had the opportunity to dive into the startup and fintech world. In 2015, she joined CurrencyFair, the world’s first online peer to peer, foreign exchange provider, before founding pocket wire, a mobile youth bank account. In 2019, Elaine was delighted to accept the opportunity to lead Starling’s ambitions to enter the Irish market offering its award-winning personal and current accounts to Irish consumers and small businesses.
Frank Schwab, Strategic Advisor and co-founder of FinTech Forum Frankfurt>
Frank Schwab is a strategic advisor and co-founder of FinTech Forum Frankfurt, a member of the Board of Directors at Gulf International Bank in Bahrain, and a member of the Risk Advisory Committee at PayU in Amsterdam. His main topics are new ideas, creativity, innovation, technology, and banking. Before that, Frank Schwab worked as, Managing Director of GIZS (paydirekt / Sparkassen), CEO of Fidor TecS AG, Chairman of Hufsy in Copenhagen, Senior Advisor at McKinsey, Member of the Technology Advisory Board of Sberbank, Moscow, and a director of innovation for Deutsche Bank. He has also lectured several years at the Mannheim Business School Creativity and Innovation Management.
Rachel Woolley, Global Anti Money Laundering (AML) Manager at Fenergo
Rachel Woolley is the Global Anti Money Laundering (AML) Manager at Fenergo and is based out of the firm’s headquarters in Dublin. Rachel has over 10 years’ experience in the Financial Services industry having worked primarily in the fund’s industry and retail banking. She has a strong background in compliance, particularly in the areas of anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist financing (AML/CTF). Rachel holds a number of professional designations and is a member of the ACOI’s Financial Crime Working Group. Fenergo is a leading provider of Client Lifecycle Management, AML/KYC Compliance, and Client Data Management solutions for investment, corporate, commercial and private banks.
Jamie Heaslip, Brand Manager, Flender
Having played 13 years of professional rugby, Jamie has transitioned to being an investor and entrepreneur. Following working with Google, he is now taking on the role as head of brand for Flender, the fastest growing digital lending platform in Ireland.
Ronan Hughes, Principal Architect for Core Banking and Group Manufacturing at Bank of Ireland
Ronan is Principal Architect for Core Banking and Group Manufacturing at Bank of Ireland. A highly motivated professional with a consistent record of designing and delivering high-quality complex payment systems in an ever-changing legislative environment. A strong leader with Company Director and Board level experience on both National and International governing bodies and technical Working Groups across Europe. Considerable experience in Design, delivery, analysis, and testing in new technology adoption, application and a proven track record in Implementation, Migration, and compliance. Ronan promotes an open and effective communication method to aid strong delivery, Business and Customer focus, continuous improvement and an adaptive approach to any situation. Specialties: Technology Mergers, Migration & Integration of technical systems and business cases for new technology and methodology.Considerable experience in Payments Systems: BACS, CHAPS, SWIFT, SEPA, Target2, Euro1, Global Transaction Services, Instant Payments and deployment of blockchain business cases.Considerable Experience in 3rd party negotiations with suppliers and customers.