Sara Abbasi, Principal Consultant, FINTRAIL

Sara combines her industry experience in global payments and private and investment banking focusing on transaction monitoring, SAR reporting and anti-money laundering investigations with expertise in agile project delivery. Sara has worked with a range of financial institutions supporting them with technology transformation programmes, designing anti-financial crime frameworks for emerging products and testing, and implementation of third party anti-financial crime solutions to ensure operational readiness.

Ciara Aitchison, Managing Director, FINTRAIL

At FINTRAIL Ciara leads client engagements including audit and thematic assurance, regulatory remediation and complex technical advisory. She has extensive experience in banking and financial crime prevention across CDD, AML policy and supporting capabilities. She led the financial crime team for Santander UK’s wealth division, and led policy implementation for the Retail and Corporate Bank. At Barclays she implemented the financial crime target operating model for correspondent banking and managed the global enhanced due diligence function for the Corporate Bank.

Azrie Affendie, Financial Crime Program Manager, Blockchain.com

Azrie Affendie is a financial crime and compliance leader working at the intersection of digital assets, fintech, and regulatory strategy. He currently operates within the crypto ecosystem, where he focuses on building and scaling AML, CTF, sanctions, and transaction monitoring frameworks that function effectively across complex, multi-jurisdictional environments. His experience spans both traditional financial services and crypto-native platforms, with a strong emphasis on translating regulatory expectations into practical, risk-based operating models that support sustainable growth. Azrie is particularly interested in how technology, data, and emerging AI-driven tooling can improve decision-making, governance, and auditability within financial crime programmes. He is an active contributor to industry discussions on regulatory change, financial inclusion, and the evolving risk landscape facing fintech and digital asset firms, and regularly engages with peers across compliance, product, and leadership roles.

Matthew Aspell, Head of Financial Crime, Product Compliance & Risk, Wise

Matt is a seasoned financial crime specialist with over 10 years of experience spanning the insurance, investment, and fintech industries. In his current role as the Global Head of Financial Crime at Wise, Matt is responsible for guiding Product teams in the development of cutting-edge solutions for KYC, transaction monitoring, and sanctions screening - balancing compliance requirements with customer experience.

Over the past six years at Wise, Matt has been dedicated to enhancing the effectiveness of financial crime controls by pioneering the adoption of machine learning technologies. This focus on innovation has been central to his work in building and scaling compliance frameworks that are both effective and efficient.

Orna-Edel Boland, Director of Anti-Financial Crime & UK MLRO, IFX Payments

Lowri Chapman, Money Laundering Reporting Officer, UK, Bitpanda

Lowri Chapman is the Money Laundering Reporting Officer for Bitpanda in the UK.

Previously, she served as Deputy MLRO at Kraken, following prior roles in global suspicious activity investigations at Kraken and Amazon. With experience spanning crypto, e-commerce and cross-border illicit activity, Lowri brings a practical perspective on detecting and mitigating financial crime in high-growth environments.

Emil Dall, Principal Consultant - Head of Sanctions, FINTRAIL

Emil has worked with FINTRAIL clients on assessing and uplifting their control frameworks, in particular relating to high risk verticals and jurisdictions. Emil also leads FINTRAIL’s sanctions assurance and advisory projects, including assessment of the design, adequacy and testing of sanctions systems and controls. Prior to joining FINTRAIL, Emil held senior advisory positions in global Fintechs and was a Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for Finance and Security (RUSI).

Colin Darby, Managing Director - Regulatory Compliance, FINTRAIL

Colin leads FINTRAIL’s work supporting clients across the broader spectrum of risk and compliance beyond financial crime. He brings over 20 years of experience in the financial services sector, spanning roles in regulation, consultancy, and industry.

Before joining FINTRAIL, Colin held senior leadership positions, including as Head of Risk and Compliance for a pan-European FinTech, where he was the accountable executive for regulatory relationships and enterprise-wide compliance strategy. He also led regulatory consulting propositions for a global consultancy and previously worked as a regulator, giving him a deep understanding of supervisory expectations and regulatory engagement.

Colin has advised clients across the EMEA and APAC regions on designing, implementing, and enhancing risk and compliance frameworks that are proportionate, practical, and scalable.

Robert Evans, Co-Founder, FINTRAIL

As co-founder of FINTRAIL, Robert is a leading authority on innovative financial crime compliance, and is responsible for the execution of financial crime compliance projects for clients in Europe, US and Asia. He exploits his knowledge of and experiences within developing and high risk economies, institutional banking and financial services to help FINTRAIL’s clients design, execute and assure financial crime compliance objectives from a business and customer-centric perspective. He is the co-author of the ACAMS "AML for FinTech” courses and co-established the FinTech FinCrime Exchange (FFE), a global network of compliance professionals in the FinTech sector.

Matt Gilson, Lead Financial Crime Analyst, Financial Intelligence Unit, Monzo

Matt Gilson is the Lead Analyst for Monzo’s Financial Intelligence Unit, leading intelligence analysis into terrorist financing, modern slavery, human trafficking, complex money laundering and sanctions evasion.

He joined Monzo before the first current account customer. Before that, he spent 8 years in law enforcement as a financial investigator.

Matt formed part of the original Joint Money Laundering Intelligence Taskforce (JMLIT) pilot in 2015 and currently sits on the JMLIT Operations Senior Management Team. He enjoys and is a big advocate of Public Private Partnerships, believing this is crucial to fighting financial, serious and organised crime.

He is also passionate about pushing the boundaries when it comes to intelligence sharing with law enforcement and has spearheaded some innovative projects to enhance law enforcement's intelligence development opportunities.

Abigail Gries, Global MLRO, MarTrust

Abigail Gries is currently the Global Money Laundering Reporting Officer (MLRO) at MarTrust, a specialised global financial services company for the maritime industry. She has oversight of the client due diligence, transaction monitoring, and sanctions functions, driving efficient, customer-centric onboarding and monitoring globally.

She brings 18 years’ experience across regulated financial services having previously held senior leadership roles including MLRO and Head of Risk and Compliance at Aspire Commerce Group, Group Head of AML at Moneycorp, and MLRO and Compliance Officer at Moneycorp Bank. Across these roles, she has led enterprise-wide AML programmes, managed regulatory engagement, and ensured compliance with evolving global regulatory and sanctions requirements.

Anila Haleem, Sanctions Policy & Upstream Risk Lead, NatWest Group

Caitlin Jenkins-Watson, Manager, Child Sexual Abuse Threat Lead, UK National Crime Agency

Caitlin Jenkins-Watson is a Manager in the National Crime Agency’s Threat Leadership Command tackling Child Sexual Abuse. Her work in this space has included developing the response to Financially Motivated Sexual Extortion working nationally and internationally to tackling this global threat. She has also worked in the CEOP Education team developing national preventative initiatives and safeguarding programmes for children, professionals and parents. Previously, Caitlin worked in Victim Identification working to identify and safeguard victims of human trafficking in the UK and globally. Her background is in law with an LLB in International Human Rights and Criminal Law.

Shannon Krishna, Head of Risk & Compliance (MLRO), Incard

Shannon Krishna is Head of Compliance and MLRO at Incard, an FCA-authorised EMI. She is a senior financial crime and compliance leader with experience across traditional banking and high-growth fintechs in the UK, Europe, Australia, and New Zealand. Shannon has held leadership roles at The Co-operative Bank, WorldRemit, Luno, Volume, and Incard, giving her a cross-sector perspective on AML/CFT, sanctions, fraud, and regulatory compliance. Her work focuses on building and scaling compliant operating models in fast-growing, highly regulated environments. Known for a pragmatic, commercially aware approach, Shannon specialises in embedding financial crime risk management into core business decision-making, and in designing proportionate, robust risk frameworks that support sustainable growth in EMI and payments businesses.

Mario Madeddu, Head of Risk & Compliance (Mature Markets) | Chief Compliance Officer, Amazon

Andy Mason, COO, Natwest Boxed & Mettle

Andy has helped build two digital banks and a pioneering Banking-as-a-Service fintech, reshaping embedded finance, in his 20 years leading operations and global programmes in regulated environments. As Chief Operating Officer for NatWest Boxed and Mettle, he leads all operations functions, spanning customer experience, onboarding, financial crime prevention, payments, card schemes and more.

Andy leads a dynamic, inclusive and ambitious culture that the team continues to foster. He collaborates with product, engineering, risk and marketing teams to solve complex problems and enable people to grow. His expertise includes leadership, AI, fintech, operations, customer experience, AML/CTF, sanctions, fraud, data, analytics, payments, and scaling high-growth businesses.

Paddy O’Keefe, Economic Crime Public and Private Partners Manager, Virgin Money

Paddy is an experienced Economic Crime leader with a track record of influencing positive change. Leading Virgin Money’s Public Private Partnership engagement internally he leverages intelligence to develop the banks systems and awareness of threats protecting our customers from harm While externally the bank engages with our public private partners to impact the threats posed by Economic Crime and those criminals that seek to profit from it. Previously Paddy had a 20-year career in law enforcement serving as a Detective up to the rank of Inspector with most of his career focused on organised crime investigations and laterally law enforcements strategic response to economic crime.

Paul Raffile, Cybercrime Researcher

Paul Raffile is an intelligence analyst specialising in global cybercrime and transnational organised crime. He has led digital investigations across government and corporate sectors, with a focus on emerging online threats. His recent research into financial sextortion syndicates has been featured in major outlets including NBC News, Bloomberg, BBC, and The New York Times. Paul’s findings have contributed to key safety updates on leading social media platforms, helping to improve online protections for youth worldwide.

Emma Swift, Director, Trust and Safety Monetization Policy, TikTok

Emma Swift leads Monetization Policy globally for Trust and Safety at TikTok. She works at the intersection of policy, regulation and product development within TikTok's monetization ecosystem, advising a safety-by-design approach and driving innovative solutions to enable safe business growth. With 15 years experience developing and implementing policies and product safety strategies within government and the technology sector, she previously held roles at Google leading their verification and transparency efforts, and the UK government, advising on policy strategies to support the technology startup community.

Greg Wlodarczyk, Managing Director, FINTRAIL

Greg represents a new breed of compliance and anti-financial crime professional, combining an IT background with a deep understanding of international anti-financial crime regulation and - more importantly - how you turn it into effective customer-centric operations. Throughout his career he has managed teams as well as designed and overseen processes in first and second lines of defence working in variety of sectors including money service businesses, international money transfers and electronic money institutions.