Past Speakers APAC

Having Agile and Lean mindset, I am able to deliver business values faster, higher quality and less costly. I have experience in engaging and influencing top management and key stakeholders. I am a great presenter and capable to speak to large audience. Above all, I am an excellent coach, mentor and leader.

I have 30 years of working experience in Bank, Asset Management, Insurance and Software industry. I had successfully delivered numerous projects in the IT, Operations, Finance and HR space. Busking is my interest and I do it for social purpose. I am a part-time music street busker too.

A passionate leader with over 20 years experience in B2B Sales, Key Account Management and Business Development in both Finance and ICT/Telecommunications industries, specialising in security, data, communications, SaaS and hosted software.

A highly experienced professional in the payment space with extensive knowledge across the product lifecycle, including innovation and strategy, business development, design, delivery, marketing and end-to-end product ownership and business strategy. Currently building and delivering SaaS delivery models for Fintechs and Financial Institutions. Extensive experience of building and leading multi-disciplinary international teams.

Manu Rajan brings over two decades of hands-on learning across an interestingly diverse blend of Advertising, Analytics, Telecom, and Consumer Finance, e-Commerce & Fintech. He has been passionately consolidating all that learning to drive Financial Inclusion in Developing Markets across geographies including Africa, Asia & the Pacific. He has been a techno-marketer for over 23 years and had worked with companies in the USA, Asia, Pacific, and Africa that blended technology and finance that are relevant to the poor. Manu is working as the Division CEO of Wing Cambodia which has interests in Commercial Banking, Payments, and eCommerce

Thought leader with a proven track record in leading large scale transformation programs, new product launches, platform buildout and digitization. High passion individual who creates result driven culture through stakeholder buy in and people engagement.

Key Highlights:

• Digital Transformation: Led complex transformations and transitioning existing manual to digital operations.
• Leadership: Ran large scale multi-cultural diverse operations team handling multiple products.
• Greenfield Processes: Built green field end-to-end digital client journey.
• Regulatory Compliance: Client journey, process, systems and delivery lead for multiple regulatory programmes.
• Process Standardization: Written global process standards which have been implemented across 30 markets.
• Risk Management: Conceptualized and implemented automated client life cycle solutions ranging across account opening, transaction processing, and settlement to corporate action.
• Integration: Instrumental in planning and execution of banks operation and technology integration with the bought identity.

Core Competencies:

• Applying design-thinking methodology translating into best-in-class client centric deliverables.
• Implementing ingenious strategic initiatives for surmounting business challenges.
• Providing analytical and innovative guidance from conceptualization to implementation as part of constant improvement.
• Deep understanding of client journeys, business models and new age banking operations.
• Experienced in drawing-up organizational structures, business alignment, credit, risk management, governance, client due diligence, underwriting, coaching team members and use of new age technology.

Passionate about technology driven businesses and applications in areas of social sharing, cloud services, web and mobile. Experienced in managing corporate scale projects to improve end user experience, drive business growth and profits. Rich know-how and knowledge of business frameworks, software and technology.

Winner of the Group Operations & Technology Global Innovation Competition for the most innovative idea on Gamification

Board Member of HKUST – DDP Program, Industrial Advisory Board (http://www.ust.hk/) and Singapore International Chamber of Commerce Digitisation Committee

World-class University in Hong Kong and Asia|HKUST
http://www.ust.hk

A passionate leader with first class communication skills and a long track record of successfully management and corporate strategy. Isma is educated to a very high level, with extensive knowledge of all current economic, social and regulatory issues. An inspiring and motivational manager with highly rated interpersonal skills and the ability with passion to develop the vision of any company he manages. He is able to push performance improvement whilst at the same time delivering the growth. He will always ensure that clear objectives and expectations are delivered and maintained. New exciting opportunity with an ambitious business that wants to grow excites him.

His strength has always been founded on his interpersonal skill and strong networking that makes communication come easy to grasp complex issues simply and quickly, but more importantly to articulate those issues evenly to the most important stakeholder, the customer in a positive ways.

Dennis is an accomplished digital business leader and speaker in innovation and leadership. Armed with dual experience in Information Technology and Banking, he has a unique advantage in developing and executing strategies for the transformation of businesses in a digital world.

Dennis was a senior banker who had previously run billion dollar businesses as head of consumer bank for Standard Chartered Bank and UOB in Singapore. He was responsible for many of the innovations in the consumer banking industry in Singapore, such as e$aver, XtraSaver (Winner of Asian Banker Best Deposit Linked account in 2007), Retail Bonds, Step-up time deposit, Pay-Any-Card (Winner of Asian Banker Best Payment Product in 2011), 15% Dining Cashback everywhere, 2-day Mortgage Service Guarantee, UOB Income Builder, One Account and UOB Mighty App.

A digital bank pioneer in ASEAN, Dennis was global head of TMRW Digital Group (UOB’s Millennial digital bank), where he was responsible for the strategy, growth and delivery of the TMRW Digital Bank. The first TMRW Digital Bank ( www.tmrwbyuob.com ) went live in Thailand in 2019, and the second in Indonesia in 2020. TMRW won Global Finance Most Innovative Digital Bank in Asia Pacific in 2019. Dennis also led the joint venture initiatives into Fintechs like Avatec.ai and VUI Pte Ltd as part of the ecosystem to support the growth of TMRW.

Deepak Sharma heads Kotak Mahindra Bank’s digital initiatives where he drives digital transformation, business model innovation, and future-ready initiatives of the bank. He is responsible for efficiency, productivity, customer experience, and growth of the business through digital intervention across digital channels, lending, payments, investments, insurance, trade & forex, for the Retail, SME, Private Wealth, and Institutional Banking segments. Deepak also leads Digital IT & Product Engineering, Innovation Lab, Design Studio, Fintech partnerships, and the Start-up ecosystem participation for the bank.

Under his leadership, Kotak has launched several innovative and global first products such as 811, Jifi, Hashtag Banking, KayMall, WhatsApp Banking & Kaypay, apart from new initiatives like API, Open & Connected Banking, Conversational Banking Bot ’Keya’, BYOD Biometric Banking, Cross border remittances on Blockchain, Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Robotic Process Automation. Deepak believes in constant innovation and focuses on building business models & platforms which are customer-centric, value accretive, and disruptive.

Deepak has worked across various international markets and brings a global perspective to the business. In his previous role, he was responsible for setting up the Bank’s highly successful Non-Resident Indian (NRI) & International Remittances business. Deepak also played a key role in launching the Bank’s affluent banking program – Privy League.

With over 27 years of experience, Deepak’s professional tenure spans the banking, telecom, and consumer services verticals.Prior to joining Kotak, he was part of the leadership team of Consumer Banking at Standard Chartered from 2003 to 2008. Thereafter, as National Head for Corporate Business at Standard Chartered, he was responsible for building the corporate payroll and Wealth Management business.

Deepak has completed an advanced program in Strategy from IIM Calcutta as well as the Stanford LEAD Certificate in Corporate Innovation. He is a member of the Airtel Customer Advisory Board, Member of the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) Digital Transformation Committee, FICCI National Committee on Fintech & a number of Startup-Industry Forums, in addition to participating in various trade & Government initiatives on the Digital India Roadmap. He mentors fintech and start-up ecosystems on an ongoing basis.

Skilled in Digital Banking, Payments, Sales and Business Relationship Management, Risk Management, Financial Services, and Banking. Strong in Transaction Banking, Digital Experiences, Financial Inclusion, Strategy and Growth Hacking.

Victor heads Citi Ventures’ incubation and venture-building program (D10x) for Citi’s Institutional Clients Group (ICG), which takes a client-centric, entrepreneurial, mid-term perspective on growth and disruption of wholesale banking. In his role, Victor strives to provide a unique point of view to Citi’s Leadership, informed by targeted, thematic experimentation and commercially-driven, greenfield product, service, and/or capability development.

Originally from Bulgaria, Victor is a seasoned entrepreneur, global citizen, and systems thinker with keen interests in business model innovation and automated decision support systems. He has over a decade of experience in building and scaling technology startups across the globe. His venture involvements range from intelligent content curation and discovery through forestry tokenization to HR automation and talent analytics.

He holds an MS in Decision Sciences from the London School of Economics, a double MS in System Dynamics Modelling from the University of Bergen in Norway and Radboud in the Netherlands, and a BSc in International Business from the Copenhagen Business School.

Deepak is passionate about bringing together data scientists, technology/UX experts and product managers to design & implement digital marketing & advertising engines to help grow revenue.

A demonstrated track record in building business intelligence & analytics platforms with teams in multiple countries managed centrally. Over 20 years of experience with strong technical expertise in BI, analytics, data management, cloud adoption, CX (customer experience) journeys and managing large campaign management operations.

He has significant leadership expertise in setting up and managing culturally diverse teams across continents & delivering complex technology projects with P&L accountability. Strong customer centric attitude, ability to maintain great relationships, building team loyalty, advocate of gender & cultural diversity.

Product leader in Transaction Banking space, in both global and regional settings. Global industry leader in ISO 20022 standards for payments and cash management.

Has delivered cash management product propositions in a wide variety of markets, including digital channels, all types of payments and liquidity & account management, with strong commercial track record. Also responsible for launching digital regional supply chain finance and receivables finance solutions.

Driven leader with customer focus, passion for building businesses and proven ability to grow high performing teams. +15 years experience in digital transformation, organizational change, innovation, software, apps and data. Built multiple businesses, products and apps. +12 years experience in financial sector and digital banking. Public speaker. Vlerick Executive MBA graduate.

Specialties:

• • Digital transformation, software and apps
• • Product development and service design
• • Innovation and startup scaling
• • Data and analytics
• • Program and project management
• • Lean Six Sigma
• • Organization, teams and talent development
• • Diversity and inclusion

I am a senior banker with over 25 years of experience in Retail, Private banking, Strategy Consulting and Operations. I have driven several industry first innovations such as the HNW segment within Retail Banking (Citigold Private Client, HSBC Jade), branded learning programs for RMs (Citi-Wharton and SC-INSEAD), “One-click” Client transaction approvals on mobile (My RM on SC Mobile) etc.

Wherever I go, I build businesses and organizations that innovate and drive a sustainable competitive advantage.

Currently, I am the Managing Director andGlobal Head of Affluent Client Propositions & Sales Management at Standard Chartered. At Standard Chartered, I focus on driving new client growth, digital client experience in wealth management, analytics based CRM, technology platforms in RM Sales management and the training of our frontline talent.

Prior to joining Standard Chartered, I was the Head of HSBC Premier and Jade – HSBC Hong Kong. I successfully launched an iconic brand in the form of HSBC Jade and built it into HSBC’s most profitable segments worldwide. I have also held executive positions in Citi Singapore as Asia Region Head, Citigold Private Client – where I launched and developed Citigold Private Client across Asia. It was an industry first and it turned into one of Citi’s strongest businesses. With a deep understanding of the industry and a commercial outlook, I also worked on Citigold Wealth Management strategy in Asia.

I hold an an MBA from The University of Chicago, Booth School of Business (Class of 2007). I believe in the notion of lifelong learning, which is why I am incredibly proud of the training partnerships I launched with Citibank -The Wharton School of Business and Standard Chartered-INSEAD Wealth Academy.

With a strong passion for the financial services industry, I have been honored to receive multiple awards by renowned publications like Retail Banker International, Private Banker International, and Asian-Investor.

I’m an Executive Solutions Enterprise Architect with over 15 years of experience in managing technical and business teams across the globe to deliver strategic projects for high-profile clients across various industries including P&G, CEMEX, Verizon, Allianz and Hertz.

I’ve always been intrigued by the ability and use of Artificial Intelligence, Big Data and Cloud Solutions to transform the nature of businesses irrespective of the industry. Beginning my career as an IT Manager, I now take my strong leadership skills and my technical knowledge of cloud tech, blockchain and iOT to optimize processes for the Banking, Finance and Telecoms industries.

I specialize in systems integration, software architecture and applications improvement.