Events

In her multi decade career in the banking and finance industry, Julie Bolan has worked as a Global Transaction Banking professional, payments domain expert across domestic, international and wholesale banking and as head of risk, regulatory and financial crime programs. In 2023 Julie was awarded the Women in Payments Australia Distinguished Payments Professional Award . In her current role as Head of Payments APAC, Go To Market Julie leads the payments business in the APAC region driving the adoption and usage of strategic services to enable instant and frictionless payments across the Swift community. This includes GPI services such as Swift Go, Pre-Validation and gCase in addition to supporting foundational transformation programs such as the ISO 20022 CBPR+ program, Network Interoperability and Payment Experience initiatives. Previously, Julie spent 25+ years at Westpac, where she held senior leadership positions including Head of Receivables Products, Head of GTS Product Delivery Asia, Director Payments (including NPP), Head of Network Management and Head of Risk, Regulatory and Financial Crime Programs and Transformation.

Tod Burwell is the President and Chief Executive Officer of BAFT. Prior to being promoted to CEO, he served as the Senior Vice President of Trade Products with oversight of all trade-related initiatives including the Global Trade Industry Council, Trade Committees, and other strategic initiatives of the organization. Mr. Burwell has over 25 years of trade, supply chain and cash management experience as a banking practitioner, as well as serving as a consultant to global corporations and suppliers of strategically integrated trade solutions. Prior to joining BAFT, Mr. Burwell was a Managing Director at JPMorgan Chase and held senior global management roles responsible for trade operations, launching the logistics business and managing global product sales for trade finance and logistics management.

Lauren D’Arcy is the Head of the Financial Institutions team for APAC and Middle East, based in Singapore. The teams’ focus is to support the banking requirements of large financial institutions through the provision of cash, trade and FX, as well as localized support. In addition, Lauren is the Global Head of Partnership Bank Relationships. In this role Lauren is primarily responsible for overseeing the growth and co-ordination of a segment of Financial Institution clients that we engage with across Corporate and Investment Banking. Lauren joined Barclays in 2011. Before joining Barclays, Lauren held various roles in the Cash Management team at Deutsche Bank in both Dublin and London

Dr. Filipe is a leading entrepreneur and sustainability expert, based in Switzerland. He is currently the Managing Director of Bryce SA, a Swiss-based physical commodities trading firm. He is also the co-founder and investor behind GreenEmissions, a Swedish cleantech startup focused on plant-sequestered carbon credits, formerly incubated by the European Space Agency. Previously, he held leadership positions in publicly traded multinationals, also Dr. Filipe's founded another startup, which created the world's first blockchain platform for grain trading and the first tokenization of physical commodities. He holds a doctorate in Business Administration with a focus on business sustainability, being a published author in the field. He also holds a master's degree in environmental sciences. Dr. Filipe is a multilingual professional fluent in Portuguese, English, and French. He also possesses working knowledge of Spanish and German and is currently expanding his language skills by learning Korean and Russian.

With nearly 25 years of experience in Financial Services, Tom joined BNY Mellon as the Head of Financial Crimes Compliance – APAC in August 2021, from Morgan Stanley. He brings deep experience in all aspects of financial crimes compliance. Tom also spent nearly 17 years at JPMorgan Chase (JPMC), including 8+ years in Hong Kong after 8+ years in New York. During this period he became the Head of Regulatory and Risk Technology and was Technology Information Risk Officer for JPMC Private Bank in Asia. Tom earned his BS/MBA from Clemson University and is a Certified Anti-Money Laundering Specialist (ACAMS).

Dr. Tom James is a world-renowned financial services thought leader, a FinTech entrepreneur, fund manager, published author and keynote speaker. Dr. James co-founded TradeFlow Capital, the worlds first fund group investing specifically in global commodity trade for SME firms; all made possible through digitised supply chain and operational processes. The group launched its first fund in 2018 and thanks to Digital processes has enabled billions of dollars of imports and exports. His commercial exposure has been gained through a broad range of senior executive roles in commodity trading, investment management, commodity finance and technology architecture.

Alan is the head of the FinTech Infrastructure Office at the Monetary Authority of Singapore. He is responsible for developing Singapore’s digital financial infrastructure and establishing platforms for cross border connectivity. Prior to this, he held various leadership roles in the private sector including managing consulting and development teams across Asia Pacific.

Cynthia Lim is the General Manager Market Analysis at South32, where Cynthia also holds the title of Chief Economist. With a background in Economics from the University of Cambridge and The London School of Economics and Political Science, Cynthia has a wealth of experience in economic analysis and forecasting. In addition to their role at South32, Cynthia is the President and Board Member at WIMAR SG, where Cynthia leads efforts to promote inclusion and diversity within the community. Cynthia has previously worked at Wood Mackenzie, the Ministry of Trade and Industry, and the Ministry of Finance in various economist roles. Additionally, Cynthia is a part-time Lecturer at Nanyang Technological University, collaborating with South32 to educate students on metals and mining.

Kaushik Mukherjee is Senior Vice President and Head of Global Receivable & Trade for Asia Pacific, at Wells Fargo, based in Singapore. Kaushik joined Wells Fargo, Hong Kong in 2011, from Axis Bank, where he spent 14 years working in various leadership roles in Trade Operations, International Banking, Corporate Trade & Cash Management, Credit and Treasury functions as well as Trade Asset Distribution, both at Head Office in Mumbai and its Hong Kong branch. He moved to Singapore in 2014 with Wells Fargo, to manage the trade business for Asia South region involving India sub-continent, South-East Asia and Australia, both for the Corporate and FI clients. He took over the role of heading the GRT business for the entire APAC region in Oct 2020, with team members based in Singapore, Hong Kong, China and Japan, covering the Corporate and FI clients in the region.

Sriram joined DBS in 2018 as Managing Director, Global Transaction Services. His current remit as Group Head of Product Management covers cash management, liquidity, trade finance and supply chain finance solutions offered by the Bank. With more than 20 years of banking experience spanning across several key international financial hubs, including Singapore, Hong Kong, Dubai and India, Sriram spearheads DBS’ digital product initiatives across the region and is responsible for leading overall business performance, strategy and product innovation across the bank’s suite of transaction banking solutions. Prior to joining DBS, Sriram held several senior leadership roles in global banks such as HSBC and Standard Chartered covering areas such as corporate banking, transaction banking and trade finance.

Rohit is Currency Cloud’s Managing Director for the APAC region. Rohit co-founded Trusting Social and served as its Chief Operating Officer, helping drive the company’s growth from pre-revenue stages to establishing partnerships to score more than 1 billion consumers in emerging markets and providing services to more than 140 enterprise customers across the region. Prior to his Fintech career, Rohit spent nearly 20 years in investment banking and private equity, including at Deutsche Bank and Goldman Sachs, where he set up multiple new businesses across India and South-East Asia.