Speakers

Andrus Ansip

European Commission Vice-President, Digital Single Market

Andrus Ansip was appointed Vice-President of the European Commission with responsibility for the Digital Single Market in November 2014. Before moving to Brussels, he was a member of both the Estonian and European Parliaments. This followed almost nine years in Tallinn spent as Estonia’s longest-serving Prime Minister, when Ansip worked with both centre-right and centre-left parties to lead three different coalition governments. During his time as Prime Minister, he also acted as chairman of Estonia’s liberal Reform Party.

Andrius Biceika

Revolut, Country Manager Baltics

Andrius Biceika has left a warm and safe corporate world and entered the wilderness and chaos of the startup universe, which he’s been very much enjoying (most of the time) since then. Andrius has been learning invaluable lessons of the startup world and has settled at one of the hottest fintechs in Europe where he’s involved in Revolut Wealth and Revolut for Business product development. Currently, Andrius’ and his team’s goal is to ensure that by end of 2018 at least 10% of Baltic’s population start using Revolut as free and most modern alternative banking solution in the region.

Chris Skinner

TheFinanser.com, CEO

Chris Skinner is known as an independent commentator on the financial markets and fintech through his blog, the Finanser.com, as author of the bestselling book Digital Bank and its new sequel ValueWeb. In his day job, he is Chair of the European networking forum The Financial Services Club and Nordic Finance Innovation, as well as being a Non-Executive Director of the Fintech consultancy firm 11:FS.  He is on the Advisory Boards of many companies including iambank, Innovate Finance, Moven and Meniga, and has been voted one of the most influential people in banking by The Financial Brand (as well as one of the best blogs), a FinTech Titan (Next Bank), one of the Fintech Leaders you need to follow (City AM, Deluxe and Jax Finance), one of the Top 5 most influential people on BankInfoSecurity’s list of information security leaders, as well as one of the Top 40 most influential people in financial technology by the Wall Street Journal’s Financial News.

Described by Seth Wheeler, Brookings Guest Scholar and Former Special Assistant to the President for Economic Policy at the White House, as “one of the most authoritative voices on Fintech anywhere”, Chris has previously written many books covering everything from European regulations in banking through the credit crisis to the future of banking.

Mr. Skinner is a regular commentator on BBC News, Sky News, CNBC and Bloomberg about banking issues, and is a Judge on many awards programs including the Asian Banker’s Retail Excellence Awards, as well as having worked closely with leading banks such as HSBC, the Royal Bank of Scotland, Citibank and Société Générale, as well as the World Economic Forum.

Emma Heimonen

Swedbank, Head of Innovation, Digital Banking

Emma has more than 10 years experience both as an entrepreneur and as a manager in fast moving digital companies within ecommerce, gaming and mobile app development. She has lived and worked in 8 different countries. Today she is head of digital innovation for the Swedbank group where she leads both internal innovation and open innovation with 3rd party companies.

Erkki Raasuke

Luminor Group AB, CEO

Erkki began his career in the banking and financial sector more than 20 years ago when he started working in Hansabank AS (currently Swedbank Estonia). In 2009-2011 he served as the CFO of Swedbank AB, and in 2012-2013 as the Counsellor to the Minister at the Estonian Ministry of Economic Affairs and Communications. Before taking on the position of Luminor Group CEO he was the Managing Director of LHV Group (Estonia). From February 2017 Erkki is also an independent expert leading the work of the Nomination Committee, established by the Estonian government.

Since November 2016 Erkki was leading the transaction process of combining the Baltic operations of DNB and Nordea, and creating a new stand-alone Baltic financial services provider – Luminor. On 1 October 2017 Luminor launched its operations under a new, experienced management team, led by Erkki.

Henrik Roonemaa

Geenius.ee, Publisher and Co-Founder

Henrik Roonemaa is one of Estonia’s best known tech journalists. He is the publisher of Geenius.ee, a leading tech news website in Estonia and a host of two tech radio shows, Digitund and Restart. He has been covering tech as a journalist for almost 20 years and witnessed the rise and fall of many ideas, services, technologies, brands and devices.

James Oates

CEO, Cicero Capital

James Oates is one of the best known and most experienced figures in Central and Eastern European finance.

He currently runs Cicero Capital, a specialist investment company focused on central & eastern Europe (CEE) based in Tallinn. He has also served as a supervisory board member of several financial and industrial companies in the Baltic, Polish and wider Central European markets.

In a distinguished career, he has been Head of Eastern European Equities (Research & Specialist Sales) at UBS and Lazard, has invested as a fund manager in the region for Flemings Investment Management, and began his career at JP. Morgan -working in corporate finance. In the past, he has been rated a number one analyst by Greenwich Investors and Institutional Investor magazine.

Jon Bradford

Motive Partners, Founding Partner

Jon Bradford is a Founding Partner of Motive Partner. He is a highly experienced early stage investor, having launched the first bootcamp accelerator outside of the US in 2009 that subsequently merged with Techstars to become Techstars’ first international program. He also founded the Ignite100 Accelerator in the UK, the Startup Wise Guys Accelerator in Estonia and the Eleven Venture Accelerator in Bulgaria. Alongside this, he helped to launch a further nine accelerators from Montreal to Moscow earning him the title “Godfather of European Accelerators”.

Jon is also a cofounder of F6S, one of the world’s largest networks for entrepreneurs with over 1.5 million users, as well as a cofounder of Tech.eu, Europe’s premier tech news site. Jon was recently inducted into the Europas’ “Hall of Fame”, Europe’s premier startup awards. Finally, Jon was recently appointed as an Executive Advisor to Dubai Future Accelerator and the Director of the John Bradfield Centre based in Cambridge, one of the largest startup incubators in the UK.

Kaarel Kuddu

TransferWise, Head of Product

Kaarel has a long history in IT with over 10 years of experience in system analysis, business analysis and has participated in some of the biggest IT projects in Estonia. For the past 3 years he has moved to product management and switched from consulting to building something hands on, instead.

In TransferWise he helps with several aspects of the product, from international expansion to compliance and fraud.

Kilvar Kessler

Estonian Financial Supervision Authority, Chairman of the Board

Mart Maasik

SEB, Innovation LAB Director

Mart Maasik is one of the innovation pioneers who genuinely believe the times when innovation made happen behind the closed doors are over. In 2012, Mart created and rolled out innovation roadmap in SEB Baltics. Since 2015, he’s the Innovation LAB Director for SEB Group. He has been the jury member and co-founder of the Baltics most massive entrepreneurship program Ajujaht. He has also been the Chief Mentor at European Innovation Academy 2014-2017 and studied Corporate Innovation at Stanford University Graduate School of Business.

Norris Koppel

Monese, Founder and CEO

Norris is the Founder & CEO of the banking service Monese. The company has the ambitious goal of providing instant-open bank accounts for the on-demand age across the world. With the Monese app, anyone can open a bank account in Eurozone or in the UK in as little as 120 seconds on their mobile phone, without the residency restrictions or credit checks imposed by traditional banks. Monese was founded after Norris’ first-hand experience of the hassle involved with opening a bank account in a new country.

Pärtel Tomberg

Bondora, Founder

Pärtel Tomberg is the CEO of Bondora. Pärtel has built Bondora into a leading pan-European marketplace lender from a dorm room startup he founded in December 2007.

He has helped Bondora establish a new standard in marketplace lending by being first in a number of areas: (1) first marketplace open to investors across Europe, (2) first marketplace providing credit seamlessly across multiple countries, (3) first rating system making loans across markets comparable, (4) first marketplace open to accredited investors globally and (5) first marketplace in Europe with a public API and granular performance data.

Rain Lõhmus

LHV Group, Chairman of the Supervisory Board

Rain Lõhmus is the founder of LHV. Rain serves as a member of the supervisory boards of AS LHV Pank, AS Audentes and AS Arco Vara, and as a member of the management boards and supervisory boards of several other companies. Rain has graduated from the Tallinn University of Technology and completed the MBA programme in Harvard Business School. He is also a member of the Estonian Business Association.

Rain Rannu

Fortumo Mobile Payments, Founder

Rain has been involved in the mobile payments industry for 15 years, being one of the early pioneers while co-founding Fortumo’s parent company Mobi Solutions back in 2000. As a founder of Fortumo, Rain deals with strategy, new products and key partnerships. Rain holds an MBA in Technology Management. He is one of the founders of Garage48 Foundation, a non-profit focused on motivating young people to start their own companies.

Sébastien de Brouwer

European Banking Federation, Chief Policy Officer

Sébastien de Brouwer is Chief Policy Officer at the European Banking Federation (EBF). He is member of the EBF Management Committee. He is also leading the Fintech Strategy Pillar of the EBF.

As part of his activities, Sébastien is also Board member of the European Payment Council (EPC), Member of the Advisory Committee of fTLD Registry Services, LLC and member of various Expert Groups at EU level.

He is a Belgian national with a Law Degree from the Catholic University of Louvain-la-Neuve and a postgraduate in International law (University of Leiden) and in Business Studies (London School of Economics and Political Science).

Sébastien joined the EBF in 2006. Before joining the EBF, Sébastien was Head of European Affairs and Member of the Executive Committee with Febelfin, the Belgian Federation of the financial industry (including banks) and previously legal adviser. Prior to that Sébastien also worked in an International bank (Custodian) and an Insurance Company (management of important claims).

Sylvain Bouyon

CEPS, Research Fellow

Sylvain Bouyon is a Research Fellow at CEPS, where he is managing the European Credit Research Institute (ECRI). Previous appointments include those of Economist at the European Mortgage Federation, at the Participation Fund and at the National Bank of Belgium. He received a doctorate in the economics of banking and earned degrees (at the equivalent levels to both bachelor and master degrees) in economics and finance at the Ecole Normale Supérieure de Paris and Université Paris 1 Panthéon Sorbonne. During his professional experiences, Sylvain has managed several large European research projects in banking, financial innovation, consumer protection, statistics, and economics. He has also published books and articles in peer-reviewed journals on these different topics.

Veronika Mets

Moneyval, Programme Manager

Ms. Veronika Mets is a lawyer by profession and works for the Council of Europe providing expert assistance to Directorate of Information Society and Action Against Crime in implementation of the MONEYVAL mutual evaluation program, which supports states fulfilling their commitments in accordance with the international standards of money laundering and terrorist financing and in compliance with Council of Europe conventions, regulations and standards. She has also given expert assistance to Financial Action Task Force (FATF) and represents MONEYVAL in various FATF working groups. Ms. Mets has participated in following countries assessments either as a team lead, assessor or reviewer: Estonia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Isle of Man, Slovenia, Denmark, Sweden and Albania (ongoing).

Before joining Council of Europe Ms. Mets worked for Ministry of Finance of Estonia and led the Estonian Delegation to MONEYVAL. Ms. Mets has been member of various Expert Groups at EU level and represented Estonia in negotiations of 4th Anti-Money Laundering Directive, 2nd Payment Services Directive and Wire Transfers Regulation. She has given expert advice how to conduct national assessment of money laundering and terrorist financing risks to Israel, Croatia and Kazakhstan and led the 1st National Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing Risk Assessment of Estonia with cooperation of The World Bank. Ms Mets has also experience working in private sector as a lawyer for Elion Esindus Board of Directors.

Yrjö Ojasaar

Change Ventures, Investment Partner

Yrjö Ojasaar is an Investment Partner at Change Ventures a venture capital fund that invests into ambitious Baltic founders around the world. Before establishing Change Ventures Yrjö founded Solon Partners an angel investment boutique where he helped many high growth companies from Europe including Fortumo, Pipedrive, Tahe Outdoors, PiBond, Incron and others raise financing from investors, including Intel Capital, Samsung Venture Investments, Greycroft Partners, AngelPad, Enterprise Investors and others. Yrjö is a board member and mentor on various accelerators and incubators including European Innovations Academy (Italy), Creative Business Cup (Denmark), 3TF (Iraq), Prototron (Estonia), Startup WiseGuys (Estonia), BuildIT (Estonia) and others.

 

Read more from Fintech Forum 2017 webpage: https://feff2017.eu