Top 100 Leaders in Fintech 2022

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2022 LEADERS 100TOP 0

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FINTECH TEAM EDITOR IN CHIEF Joanna England EDITOR Alex Clere

CONTENT OFFICER Scott Birch

DIRECTORS Georgia Allen Daniela Kianičková

MANAGERS

Jane Arneta Maria Gonzalez Charlie King

Oscar Hathaway

Sophie-Ann Pinnell

Hector Penrose

Sam Hubbard

Mimi Gunn

Justin Smith

Rebekah Birleson

Jordan Wood Danilo Cardoso

Callum Hood

CHIEF DESIGN OFFICER

Matthew Johnson

Jack Drain Daniel Weatherley Jordan Hubbard

MANAGER Evelyn Howat

Mike Sadr Craig Killingback

Ben Maltby

Jake Megeary Michael Banyard

Lewis Vaughan

Stacy Norman

Glen White

WELCOME TO THE 2022 TOP 100 LEADERS LIST

Welcome to our 2022 Top 100 Fintech Leaders list. As always, this compilation of CEOs, Co-Founders and disruptive innovators, has been a challenge to put together.

Why? Because heading up a company in such a new space is not a task for the faint-hearted. It requires foresight, understanding of the current marketplace - and an almost instinctive knowledge of what the customer really needsperhaps before they are even aware of it themselves.

CEOs and founders can’t just be brilliant ideas people. They must be industry experts, good managers, customer service gurus - and be able to sell their dream to others so they can upscale and thrive.

They must also be optimists who know hard decisions will ultimately yield results.

So, as you read through our latest Top 100 list, spare a thought to those of us that also had to make tough choices. It’s been a challenging journey indeed. Enjoy!

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INNOVATION AND RESILIENCE ARE LEADING THE WAY

As the close of 2022 begins, many of us are already speculating about what 2023 will bring.

Its fair to say that this year, the fintech industry has taken a more serious turn - not just because it is entering an expected period of maturation, but because the global economic climate has presented many challenges.

Last year, fintech boomed and exploded, with innovation and disruption hitting dizzying heights. Startups mushroomed, BNPLs grew 10-fold and funding rounds attracted capital like never before.

Today the mood is sombre, as investors exercise caution and fintechs apply more circumspect tactics to their growth strategies.

The feverish, gold-rush scramble to digitally transform from legacy systems to cloudbased solutions and beyond, has calmed.

But the movers and shakers of that heady 2021 period are still the leaders of their sectors. Mobile technologies are enabling faster, lower-cost transactions and better customer flexibility. Improved regulations are building trust for both users and vendors. Crypto is becoming increasingly mainstream, and banking has never been so accessible.

From financial inclusion to embedded finance, fintechs are continuing to steadily transform the financial landscape on a global scale.

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While IPOs have been halted, and teams have been scaled down, funding is still strong and talent is stronger still. Figures show that, rather than having taken a five-year dip, fintech investment has simply dropped back to levels seen in 2019 and 2020.

Our leaders of 2022 are those who have survived and thrived both boom and bust within a 24-month period. They have also exibited outstanding resiliance and they offer optimism for the year ahead too.

100

Rachel Carpenter CEO Intrinio

Rachel Carpenter is CEO and Co-Founder of Intrinio, a fintech platform that provides realtime financial data through its API. She founded the company in 2015 alongside Joey French, a fellow graduate from Wisconsin School of Business, with the goal of ultimately reinventing the financial data supply chain. She speaks regularly about finance and data, both at events and on TV.

Financial Services United States

98

Ksenia Yudina

Founder and CEO UNest

As Founder and CEO of mobile app UNest, Ksenia Yudina is making it simpler for parents to invest in their children's future by opening a tax-advantaged investment account. By any standard, Yudina is a disruptor. Originally from Russia, she has been named a rising star in business and was nominated as a top female founder in fintech in 2019.

Financial Services United States

99

Natasha Bansgopaul

Co-Founder and Chief Operating Officer (COO) VegaX Holdings

Natasha Bansgopaul is an experienced executive within fintech and marketing. She is currently COO and Co-Founder of VegaX Holdings, an asset management firm focused on digital assets, having previously helped to launch Konstellation and DarcMatter. A New York native, she was among the digital experts inducted into the Presidential Innovation Fellows’ 2021 cohort, which is designed to digitally transform government.

97

Georgia Stewart

Co-Founder and CEO Tumelo

Georgia Stewart is CEO and Co-Founder of Tumelo, which is seeking to provide greater transparency around investment classes like ISAs and workplace pensions. The ambition is partly to empower consumers to be more engaged in their investments. She's one of three founders who started Tumelo at Cambridge University, where they campaigned for the university's £6bn fund to be sustainably invested.

Financial Services United Kingdom

Financial Services South Korea

96

Evgenia Loginova

Co-Founder and CEO Radar Payments

Evgenia Loginova is Co-Founder and CEO of Radar Payments, a white-label payments service designed for PSPs, banks, acquirers, issuers and payment fintechs. Also known as Jane, Loginova is a graduate from the prestigious London School of Economics and previously held Executive Director roles at Goldman Sachs. Based in London, she joined BPC in 2012 before co-founding Radar Payments in 2020.

Financial Services Hungary

94

Samantha Seaton CEO Moneyhub Enterprise

As the CEO of Moneyhub, Samantha Seaton sits at the vanguard of open banking, open finance and open data. Her prior experience includes 15 years at insurance company Willis Towers Watson, playing a leading role at fintech eValue and advocating for women within open finance as part of Open51. She enjoys horse riding and is a regular eventer.

95

Sonia Dorais CEO Chaser

Boasting a wealth of experience in the automation economy, Sonia Dorais is currently CEO at Chaser, a UK-based fintech offering end-to-end accounts receivable software. Originally from Canada, she is a former CMO at a number of B2B software companies. She is a champion of women in fintech and is passionate about striking a balance between automation and people power.

IT Service and IT Consulting United Kingdom

93

Tatiana Rozoum

Co-Founder

Fintecture

Tatiana Rozoum is Co-Founder of Fintecture, a French fintech pioneering transactions between merchants. She boasts over a decade of experience across the payments sector, specialising in open banking, PSD2 and regulation. Placing 93rd on our list rounds off a stellar year for Rozoum, having already been named in the top 25 women leaders in Europe by the Financial Technology Report.

IT Service and IT Consulting United Kingdom

Financial Services France

92

Georgina Nelson

Founder and CEO TruRating

The seed for consumer ratings platform

TruRating was sewn when Founder and CEO Georgina Nelson was studying psychology at university. She realised that trustworthy data, collected at the right time, was the key to understanding and predicting human behaviour. She went on to study law and worked for a time for consumer rights organisation Which?, before starting TruRating in 2013.

Information

90

Fiona Roach Canning

Co-Founder, Chief Product and Marketing Officer

Pollinate International

Fiona Roach Canning has spent two decades driving change at some of the world's most well-known organisations including Unilever, Visa, Aimia and now Pollinate – the payments enabler she co-founded in 2017, which empowers some of the world's biggest banks to unlock the power of payments data. Roach Canning holds a Master's degree in mathematics from the University of Cambridge.

Financial Services United Kingdom

91

Ximena Aleman

Co-Founder and Co-CEO

Prometeo OpenBanking

Uruguay might not leap out as a hotbed for fintech, but it's where Ximena Aleman and her Co-Founders – Rodrigo Tumaián and Eduardo Veiga – conceived Latin America's largest open banking platform. Today, Prometeo connects with 40 financial institutions through 110 APIs. Aleman, a graduate of two of the country's top universities, is the company's Co-CEO along with Tumaián.

89

Louise Hill

Co-Founder and Chief Operating Officer

GoHenry

Louise Hill already had an extensive background in ecommerce when, in 2012, she and two other frustrated parents set out to create an app that would teach children about money and financial literacy. They launched GoHenry, which uses prepaid debit cards to teach kids about responsible spending and saving. Today it boasts two million members in the UK and US.

Financial Services United Kingdom

88

Ana Barrera CEO and Founder Aflore

Ana Barrera has used her extensive experience in structuring financial products for the likes of Lehman Brothers and Nomura to create one of Colombia's most promising and well-regarded fintechs. Aflore is building a network of people with a good financial track record, who can then refer friends and colleagues for small loans. She founded the Bogotá-based business in 2013.

87

Alexia and Margot de Broglie Co-Founders Your Juno

As sisters and fintech Co-Founders, Margot and Alexia de Broglie are a unique breed. They have a background in economics and finance, but it wasn't until the pandemic hit that they noticed a gender gap in financial literacy and confidence. In late-2020, they set up Your Juno, the first app focused on the financial empowerment of women and non-binary people.

86

Vilve Vene Co-Founder Tuum

Vilve Vene is technically minded by nature, starting her career as a systems architect before launching no fewer than four fintech startups – including RevRight, Icefire and Pocopay. Those formative years inspired Vene and her Co-Founders in 2019 to start Tuum, a core banking platform that makes it possible for businesses to develop and roll out financial products within weeks.

85

Alice Chen

Co-Founder and General Counsel

InvestaX

A graduate of USC's Gould School of Law, you could say that Alice Chen took the scenic route to becoming a fintech entrepreneur. In 2015, after seven years as an attorney, she co-founded InvestaX – a Singapore-based investment and trading platform for digital securities, security tokens and NFTs. She continues to draw on her legal experience as the firm's General Counsel.

Financial Services Colombia

IT Service and IT Consulting United Kingdom

Financial

84

Monel Amin

Founder and CEO DiligenceVault

Monel Amin is the Founder and CEO of DiligenceVault, which lets investment managers digitise and automate their due diligence process. Originally from India, Amin worked as a software engineer for Sprint before studying for a Master's. She held various roles at Citi before founding DiligenceVault in 2014, including managing risk across its multi-billion-dollar global hedge fund businesses.

IT Service and IT Consulting United States

83

Romina Savova

Founder and CEO PensionBee

A graduate of Harvard Business School's MBA programme, Romina Savova worked at Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley before starting PensionBee in 2015. The Londonbased fintech lets people consolidate their old pensions into a single plan, and was born out of Savova's own frustrations with managing her retirement pot. It has over 150,000 invested customers and US$3.157bn of assets under administration.

82

Stephen Roche and Gabino Roche

Co-Founders and CEOs Saphyre

It takes a determined mind to leave a stable job and set up your own company, but that's what twin brothers Stephen and Gabino Roche both did when they founded Saphyre – which leverages AI to digitise pre-trade data and activity – in 2017. Stephen spent 18 years at ATandT, while Gabino is a former Head of Product for Clarient.

Financial Services United States

81

Julia Markiewicz

Co-Founder, Chief Operating Officer Silent Eight

As Co-Founder and Chief Operating Officer at Silent Eight, Julia Markiewicz is leading the fight against financial crime and terrorist financing. The Singapore-based regtech says that, if crime were a country, it would be the eighth largest economy in the world with US$2tn laundered annually. Originally from Poland, Markiewicz holds a Master's in social policy from the University of Warsaw.

IT Service and IT Consulting Singapore

Financial Services United Kingdom

Jason (Gross) Rosen Co-Founder and CEO Petal

Jason Rosen has taken the lesser-trodden path of graduating from law school, working in practice, and then starting a fintech. As Co-Founder and CEO of credit fintech Petal, he's building an alternate reality where a consumer's creditworthiness is based on their income, savings and spend history. In many cases, they're approved even if they've never had credit before.

Financial Services United States

78

Mike Cagney

Co-Founder and CEO

A serial entrepreneur, Mike Cagney says he enjoys building companies – and that shows in his résumé. He has co-founded no fewer than four fintechs since the turn of the century, including Finaplex, Cabezon Investment Group and SoFi. He is also CEO of his latest venture, Figure, which uses the blockchain to transform financial services.

Financial Services United States

79

Timothy Sheehan Co-Founder and CEO Greenlight

With two prior businesses under his belt, Timothy Sheehan boasts a wealth of prior experience with the likes of Yahoo Finance, E*TRADE and Fiserv. In 2014, he founded Greenlight, a money app designed for teenagers. Sheehan and Co-Founder Johnson Cook envisioned an app that would teach kids about money. Today it's used by over five million parents and children.

Financial Services United States

77

Prashant Fuloria CEO Fundbox

Prashant Fuloria's is quite possibly the gold standard in tech careers. He spent six years building Google's global payment platform and later managing its monetisation products in APAC, before spending three-and-a-half years as Senior Director of Product Management at Facebook. In 2016 he joined Fundbox, an embedded working capital platform for small businesses, becoming CEO in 2020.

Financial Services United States

76

Colin Walsh

Founder and CEO Varo Bank

If you were to imagine the ideal career path for starting a challenger bank, you would imagine Colin Walsh. A graduate from Cornell, Walsh has 25 years' experience in senior roles at Wells Fargo, Lloyds Banking Group and American Express. In 2015, he founded Varo Bank as a means to help people improve their financial lives.

75

Michael Reitblat

CEO and Co-Founder Forter

Reitblat spent three years as an officer in Israeli military intelligence before embarking on an economics and history degree at Tel Aviv University. After moving to the US, Reitblat and childhood friend Liron Damri felt the pain many migrants experience when trying to verify their identity online. They founded fraud prevention platform Forter, which today protects one billion shoppers online.

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Banking United States

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IT Service and IT Consulting United Kingdom

Matthew Bochenek

CEO

Avant

Matthew Bochenek spent a decade at a fund manager in Chicago before joining lending fintech Avant in 2013. After six different promotions, he was appointed CEO in May 2021. His time with the business coincides with its stratospheric rise, connecting more than two million customers to over US$7.5bn in loans and a million credit cards in the last decade.

Financial Services United States

Matan Bar

Co-Founder and CEO Melio

When Matan Bar and Ilan Atias founded Melio in 2018, they wanted to reinvent the way businesses paid each other. Bar previously launched a social payments platform, acquired by eBay in 2011, before leading PayPal's peer-to-peer payments business with global volumes in excess of US$50bn a year. He holds three US patents and is keenly into his fitness.

72

Aung Kyaw Moe Founder and CEO 2C2P

Aung Kyaw Moe's successes in business are a far cry from his struggles as a young man. Born in Myanmar, he studied computer programming in Yangon and worked as a hotel butler by night, earning just US$7 a month. He went to university in Thailand (and later MIT and Harvard) before starting Singapore-based payments platform 2C2P in 2003.

71

Gary Hoberman

Founder and CEO Unqork

The Founder and CEO of no-code builder Unqork is no stranger to bringing about transformation through technology. Over a 25-year career, Gary Hoberman has held senior roles at large financial institutions like MetLife and Citi. He founded Unqork in 2016 to enable businesses to build enterprise software quickly, and today the New York-based company has a valuation of US$2bn.

70

Eric Poirier

CEO Addepar

It was inevitable that Eric Poirier would become a fintech leader; he started his first coding business aged 14 before attending Columbia University. After a stint at Lehman Brothers, he spent seven years helping Palantir Technologies build tools for reconciling large, disparate datasets. In 2013 he was named CEO of Addepar, which helps asset managers make better data-driven decisions.

69

Susanne Chishti

CEO

FINTECH Circle

Susanne Chishti has earned acclaim as a leading voice within fintech. Over a distinguished career, she held senior roles at Morgan Stanley, Lloyds Banking Group and Deutsche Bank. Since 2014 she has been CEO of Fintech Circle, a global fintech community based in London. She writes, speaks and lectures extensively on the topics of fintech and AI.

Financial Services Thailand

IT Service and IT Consulting United States

Financial

United Kingdom

Odunayo Eweniyi Co-Founder/Chief Operations Officer

Odunayo Eweniyi is the Co-Founder and COO of financial services platform Piggyvest. A serial tech entrepreneur, she invests in female-led African startups through FirstCheck Africa, the investment vehicle she co-founded, and has been recognised by Time magazine for her activism against police brutality in Nigeria. Along with Joshua Chibueze, she started Piggyvest to let people manage and grow their finances.

67

Michelle Chan

Co-Chair, InsurTech

FinTech Association of Hong Kong

Michelle Chan draws on two decades of experience at leading Asian telecoms and financial services companies in her role at the FinTech Association of Hong Kong. She has held senior roles at FWD Insurance and Livi Bank, and is a passionate advocate for women in tech. She is also an angel investor and Venture Partner at a Hong Kong-based firm.

65

Jonathan Kriegel

Digital

After 15 years in various leadership roles for Vodafone in Asia, Jonathan Kriegel joined Docomo in 2014 – first as CEO of its Guambased telecommunications business before switching to Docomo Digital, the digital payments provider, in London. He was appointed CEO of Docomo Digital in 2019 and led the business into its acquisition by Bango plc in August 2022.

Financial Services United Kingdom

Brad Levy

CEO Symphony

After 17 years at Goldman Sachs, including six as Global Head of Principal Strategic Investments, Brad Levy joined IHS Markit, an analytics and information provider which later merged with SandP Global. That rich background in the markets stands him in good stead at Symphony, a secure and compliant collaboration platform built for markets. He’s been CEO since June 2021

Financial Services United States

Financial Services Nigeria

Financial Services Hong Kong

Eva Wong

Co-Founder and COO Borrowell

Eva Wong is Co-Founder and COO of Borrowell, which provides credit scores and advice to Canadians. Wong started Borrowell with Andrew Graham in 2014, having worked across both the private and nonprofit sectors. She's an EY Entrepreneur Of The Year, holds a Master's from Harvard, and was named one of 20 Canadian tech founders to follow by Twitter Canada.

Financial Services Canada

Chen Amit

Co-Founder and CEO Tipalti

Veteran tech executive Chen Amit is one of two Co-Founders of Tipalti, the fintech removing manual effort from more than US$12bn's worth of accounts payable remittances every year. A private pilot in his spare time, he built the ADSL business of ECI Telecom into a US$100mn operation before heading up a carrier ethernet company that was acquired by Nokia-Siemens.

63

Assaf Wand

Founder and Executive Chairman Hippo Insurance

Before founding Hippo Insurance in 2015, Assaf Wand set up a consumer goods company called Sabi and led it to a buyout in 2015. He then founded the insurtech that has been redefining and disrupting home insurance coverage ever since. Based in California, he's an alumnus of the University of Chicago and the Australian Graduate School of Management.

Insurance United States

61

Julian Teicke

Founder and CEO wefox

Born in Germany in 1986, wefox's Julian Teicke has built an insurtech that boasts two million customers and a valuation of US$4.5bn – not bad for someone who is still in his mid-30s. He cut his entrepreneurial teeth at customised chocolate maker Chocri, Groupon and his first business venture, an ecommerce company called DeinDeal that he sold in 2015.

Insurance Germany

60

Shane Holdaway CEO Mission Lane

Shane Holdaway is CEO of Mission Lane, which helps customers build or rebuild their credit position. Prior to joining the fintech in August 2019, he spent a year leading Barclays' US consumer bank, was President of Capital One Canada, and had a stint as a business analyst for McKinsey. He lives in Richmond, Virginia with his wife and four children.

59

Sten Saar

CEO Zego

The Estonian founder of commercial motor insurtech Zego built a US$1mn notepad business as an undergraduate, then moved to London a decade ago. He met Harry Franks and Stuart Kelly while working for a holiday rental company, setting out initially to insure the gig economy. Zego has since become the UK’s first insurtech unicorn, with Saar as CEO.

Financial Services United States

Jay Shah

President and Member of Board of Directors

Personal Capital

Shah has been Personal Capital's CIO, COO, CEO and President across 13 years with the business, playing a major role in its transformation from a Silicon Valley startup to an advisory business managing over US$17bn in assets. He is vastly experienced in scaling businesses using technology and data, with prior spells at Myers Internet, ELOAN Inc and Ellie Mae.

Financial Services United States

57

Insurance United Kingdom

Guy Goldstein

CEO Next Insurance

A former fighter pilot in the Israeli air force, Guy Goldstein swapped the cockpit for the boardroom. After leaving the military, he spent several years in RandD and product development before a short stint at HP. He co-founded early mobile wallet Check Inc, which sold to Intuit for US$360mn, before setting up insurtech unicorn Next Insurance in 2016.

Insurance United States

56

Roham Gharegozlou Co-Founder and CEO Dapper Labs

Roham Gharegozlou is the brains behind viral blockchain game Cryptokitties, where players collect and trade virtual cats. The Iranianborn entrepreneur had a transient childhood, moving between Dubai, Paris and Canada. The Stanford graduate initially worked for venture capital firms before moving into game development, setting up venture studio Axiom Zen and later spinning out Dapper Labs to focus on decentralisation.

IT Service and IT Consulting Canada

55

Lawrence Calcano Chairman and CEO iCapital

Lawrence Calcano is a seasoned executive who’s guided iCapital from a startup to an investment platform managing over US$135bn in alternative assets. Before joining iCapital, he spent 17 years at Goldman Sachs including as co-head of its Global Technology Banking Group. He's appeared on the Forbes Midas List of influential people in venture capital five times in quick succession.

54

Steve Munford CEO Trulioo

When Steve Munford was appointed CEO of Canadian regtech Trulioo in 2020, he had already enjoyed a near-25-year career in senior positions at a host of software companies. He has been CEO at Sophos and Interim CEO at Absolute Software and Carbonite, as well as holding board or advisor positions at other firms. He is based in Vancouver, British Columbia.

IT Service and IT Consulting Canada

53

Michael Praeger

CEO and Co-Founder AvidXchange

Since launching AvidXchange in 2000, Michael Praeger has grown the business from a fintech startup to a serious operator within accounts payroll software. Praeger got his start in the dot-com days, selling an early recruitment website in 1999. A graduate of Georgetown University and MIT, he has been active in different venture capital firms. He lives in Charlotte, North Carolina.

IT Service and IT Consulting United States

Financial Services United States

52

Alexander (Sandy) Kemper

Founder and CEO C2FO

After graduating from Northwestern University in 1987, Sandy Kemper spent 12 years at UMB Bank before founding Perfect Commerce in 2000, a spend management software provider. In 2008, he started C2FO, which provides businesses with access to working capital. He is also Chairman of a private equity fund and lives on his family's farm in Kansas City, Missouri.

51

Alex Timm

CEO and Co-Founder Root

Alex Timm earned his stripes as a senior consultant at Nationwide Insurance. In 2015, he left to create his own auto insurance firm, Root. The company offers usage-based insurance (UBI) that rewards good drivers, with all claims made through the app. Timm is a fellow of the Casualty Actuarial Society and a member of the American Academy of Actuaries.

50

Nima Ghamsari

Founder and Head of Blend Blend

When Nima Ghamsari was young, his family moved from Iran to the US. Their experience of acclimatising and finding a home inspired Ghamsari to start Blend, a cloud-based banking platform. The fintech unicorn uses automation to enable banks and lenders to close more loans at lower cost. He's a former semi-professional poker player and a Forbes 40 Under 40 inductee.

49

Noah Kerner

CEO Acorns

New Yorker Noah Kerner has a storied background. A former DJ for Jennifer Lopez, in his 20s he built a creative agency for the young adult market called Noise, which was later acquired by Engine. In 2017, he co-founded Say, an investor communications platform that gives small shareholders a louder voice. He has been CEO of Acorns since 2014.

Services United States

Financial Services United States

Insurance United States

Rob Frohwein Co-Founder Kabbage

Rob Frohwein was Co-Founder and CEO of small business lender Kabbage, growing the fintech into a billion-dollar business before it was sold to American Express in 2020. His current venture, Keep, offers employers a way to utilise vesting cash bonuses as a workplace benefit. A serial inventor, he holds 17 US patents and has written three books on intellectual property.

Financial Services United States

Ola Doudin CEO and Co-Founder BitOasis

Ola Doudin took an unconventional route to becoming a crypto entrepreneur. She holds a bachelor's in engineering and worked for a time as a researcher at Imperial College London, developing GPS systems for industry projects including microchip programming and design. She worked in IT risk advisory for Ernst and Young, before founding Dubai-based cryptocurrency platform BitOasis in 2015.

Financial Services United Arab Emirates

47

Andrew D'Souza

Executive Chairman and CoFounder Clearco

After 15 years in business, it's fair to say that Andrew D'Souza knows a thing or two about raising money. He's secured hundreds of millions of dollars in venture capital and invested in firms like WealthSimple, Properly, and Tulip Retail. The Toronto-based entrepreneur founded ecommerce investor Clearco in 2015 as a way for businesses to raise equity-free capital.

45

Jack Zhang

Co-Founder and CEO Airwallex

Born in China, Jack Zhang moved to Australia as a teenager. When he set up a café in Melbourne with friend Max Li, they realised the exorbitant FX fees and banking costs faced by small businesses. Along with two other friends, they founded cross-border payments fintech Airwallex. Under Zhang's stewardship, the company has reached a valuation of US$5.5bn.

Financial Services Hong Kong

44

Eric Demuth CEO Bitpanda

Eric Demuth founded Bitpanda in 2014 alongside software developer Christian Trummer and Paul Klanschek, a fellow graduate from Vienna University of Economics and Business. The trio wanted to make it easier for people to invest in stocks, cryptocurrencies and commodities. An advocate for crypto and blockchain, Demuth has steered Bitpanda to a US$3.5bn valuation and occasionally invests in other startups.

43

Sam Bankman-Fried

CEO FTX

Before starting cryptocurrency exchange FTX, Sam Bankman-Fried was a trader working on the international exchange-traded funds (ETF) desk of Jane Street Capital. An MIT physics graduate, he joined forces with Google software engineer Gary Wang in 2019 to create FTX. Under Bankman-Fried's leadership, the platform has gone from nothing to daily volumes of US$9.5bn in just three-and-a-half years.

41

Charlotte Crosswell

Chair and Trustee

Open Banking

Charlotte Crosswell is Chair of the Open Banking Implementation Entity set up to advance open banking in the UK. She has 25 years of experience in financial services and technology, culminating in her receiving an OBE in 2021. A former President at Nasdaq and ex-CEO of Innovate Finance, she is a champion for diversity and innovation within financial services.

Financial Services United Kingdom

Mark Mullen

CEO Atom Bank

The head of digital bank Atom has built a 30-year career in financial services. Mark Mullen co-founded the fintech in 2014. He had previously been Head of Marketing for HSBC and Chief Executive of its telephone and internet-based bank, First Direct. He has a degree in modern history from Trinity College Dublin and a Master's from the University of Warwick.

Financial Services United Kingdom

Financial

40

Shane Happach CEO Mollie

Shane Happach is CEO of payments fintech Mollie. During a 15-year career in the payments industry, he has held multiple senior roles including VP Business Development for Ingenico ePayments and EVP Head of Global Ecommerce for Worldpay. During that time, he claims to have created more than US$40bn in value for shareholders, making the switch to Amsterdam-headquartered Mollie in 2021.

39

Breon Corcoran CEO WorldRemit

After working at JPMorgan in the late-1990s, Breon Corcoran took a 17-year detour into the gambling industry. He became CEO of Betfair and led the combined group when it merged with Paddy Power in 2016. He then returned to finance, first as non-executive director of a wealth management firm, then as CEO of money transfer fintech WorldRemit until August 2022.

37

Ariel Cohen

and Co-Founder

Ariel Cohen is CEO and Co-Founder of TripActions, a fintech that lets businesses manage their travel-related expenditure. It's the second company that Cohen has started with fellow Co-Founder and CTO Ilan Twig, the first being a business multimedia integration platform called StreamOnce. A graduate of Kellogg School of Management, Cohen was previously Senior Direct of Product Management for HP Software.

Service and IT Consulting United States

Drew Uher

Founder HomeLight

A licensed real-estate agent, Drew Uher is Founder and CEO HomeLight, a technology platform for people buying or selling their home. He started the business in 2012 after a decade in financial services, advertising and technology. He's received recognition from the likes of Deloitte and Forbes, and actively invests in businesses that bring about social or environmental change.

Real-estate United States

Financial Services United Kingdom

36

Eyal Lifshitz Founder BlueVine

A former principal at Greylock, Israeli entrepreneur Eyal Lifshitz is Founder and CEO of BlueVine. Recognising a shortfall in banking services designed for small businesses, he started the California-based company in 2013. To date, it has provided over US$13bn in financing for small businesses. He's a former associate at McKinsey in Chicago and an ex-Commander in the Israeli Defence Forces.

Financial Services United States

34

Mike Massaro CEO Flywire

During nine years as CEO, Mike Massaro has grown Flywire into a global payments company with more than 2,800 clients. After a short stint at PwC, he amassed several years of experience in senior roles for a range of software companies, focusing on the telecommunications industry. He's a recipient of the EY Entrepreneur of the Year Award in Financial Services.

35

David Arana

Founder and CEO Konfio

David Arana founded Mexican lending platform Konfío alongside Francisco Padilla in 2013. Returning to Mexico to launch a fintech was a risky move for Arana, who was Vice President for Deutsche Bank at the onset of the financial crisis. But it was a move that paid off. Konfío has already raised US$700mn, becoming one of the world's 250 largest fintechs.

33

Eugene Danilkis

Co-Founder and CEO Mambu

The Canadian Co-Founder of Mambu, described as "the driving force" behind the SaaS banking platform, has a background in technology and design. Danilkis received a Master's in Human-Computer Interactions before taking a job as a software engineer for MDA, working on systems found on the International Space Station. He's a keen reader and avid skier with an interest in photography.

Financial Services United States

Financial Services Mexico

Josh Reeves

Head of Gusto and Co-Founder Gusto

Josh Reeves is Co-Founder and Head of Gusto, an HR and payroll innovator. A believer in the power of software, Reeves has overseen its expansion to 40,000 customers in the past decade. A Forbes 30 Under 30 inductee, he underlined his commitment to Gusto's customers in 2017 by travelling cross-country in an RV to meet as many as he could.

Financial Services United States

30

Zac Prince

Founder and CEO BlockFi

Like many crypto entrepreneurs, Zac Prince bided his time in financial services before founding BlockFi in 2017. He held senior roles in business development within consumer lending, first for broker dealer and RIA platform Orchard and then consumer lender Zibby (now Katapult). In BlockFi, he has built a US$1bn company that uses blockchain to provide credit services to its clients.

Financial Services United States

31

Arik Shtilman CEO Rapyd

Arik Shtilman is the Israeli CEO and Co-Founder of Rapyd. A serial technology and startup founder, Rapyd is Shtilman's second business venture. The first was a firm called ITNavigator, which sold products and services to call centres. Shtilman guided the company through a multi-million-dollar merger with Avaya in 2013, before leaving to start the payments fintech two years later.

29

Kenneth Lin

Founder and CEO Credit Karma

Working at mission-driven businesses like Upromise and Eloan, inspired Ken Lin to start Credit Karma, a personal finance website that helps consumers understand their credit score. Since 2007, he has grown Credit Karma from a team of just three to more than 1,700. He's a trustee of Boston University, from which he gained a degree in mathematics and economics.

Financial Services United States

IT Service and IT Consulting Israel

Guillaume Pousaz Founder and CEO Checkout.com

Guillaume Pousaz founded Checkout.com in 2012 and has nurtured it into a US$40bn fintech. Originally from Switzerland, he studied mathematics at Ecole Polytechnique and economics at HEC Lausanne. He started programming aged eight, and an early fascination with street art translates into Checkout.com's trendy offices – over 20 of them worldwide. Pousaz lives in Dubai with his wife and three children.

Financial Services United Kingdom

Chris Britt Co-Founder and CEO Chime

When Chris Britt and Ryan King founded Chime in 2013, Britt had already amassed substantial experience within financial services at the likes of Comscore Networks, Visa and Green Dot. It took the digital bank five years to attract its first million customers – but within 12 months, this had exploded to four million. Britt's personal fortune is estimated at just over US$2bn.

Financial Services United States

Jason Gardner Founder, CEO Marqeta

Growing up in New Jersey, Jason Gardner had numerous businesses including making and selling tie-dyed t-shirts. After briefly working for Senator John McCain, he moved to California and founded his first tech business – a realestate platform called PropertyBridge, acquired by MoneyGram in 2007. He has grown card issuer Marqeta into a fintech giant, going public in June 2021.

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LEADERS IN FINTECH

25 TOP twenty five

25

Henrique Dubugras

Founder and Co-CEO Brex

A child prodigy in entrepreneurial terms, Henrique Dubugras grew up in Sao Paulo and began his meteoric rise to the top in fintech, when he and his equally young fellow Co-Founder Pedro Franceschi, launched their first startup aged just 16 in 2012. By 2017, the pair launched their next startup - Brex - a move that saw both the entrepreneurs drop out of their degrees at Stanford to concentrate on their new business.

Based in San Francisco, Brex is a US fintech that offers business credit cards and cash management accounts to technology companies. Businesses can also create a bank account (Brex Cash) to make use of the fintech’s range of expense management tools.

By January 2022, Dubugras officially became a billionaire during a funding rounds that saw private investors value the company at an impressive US$12.3bn.

“We made the most out of our time at Stanford… But it was really hard because we went from being completely independent in Brazil, living on our own and running a business to living in dorm rooms and attending classes.”

24

Chris Comparato

Chairman and CEO Toast

Chris Comparato is CEO and Director of Toast - a fintech that is transforming the restaurant space through its innovative transaction solutions. With over 25 years of experience in business and commerce, Comparato is focused on leading strategic go-tomarket and customer initiatives to realise maximum value out of new technologies. He has a reputation for being at the centre of rapid growth environments and consistently achieving business plan objectives while empowering Toast to strive for excellence and greater innovation.

Comparato’s background is in leading high growth SaaS, software, and consulting companies with a focus on customer success and building strong teams. Before Toast, he led all customer success functions at Acquia and Endeca, as well as roles at consulting firms Keane and Cambridge Technology Partners, where he built up a reputation for delivering innovative business technology to diverse industries. He also holds a BSc in Mechanical Engineering from Union College.

23

Suhail Sameer

CEO BharatPe

As the CEO of one of India’s fastest growing fintech companies, BharatPe, Suhail Sameer has a reputation for innovation and disruption. The Indian-born entrepreneur, who is based in Delhi, has always been interested in finance and completed his MBA in Finance and Economics at IIM, Lucknow. He also holds an MBA in International Finance from the Berlin School of Economics.

He joined the company in August 2020. He is passionate about addressing financial inclusion, and is largely hailed as the man responsible for bringing QR payment services to the region. BharatPe is essentially a payment app that enables businesses to make offline payments. The app also allows its users to accept UPI payments for free via the BharatPe QR code.

An intensely private figure, Sameer was called upon recently to manage serious allegations involving his BharatPe Co-Founder, and has been praised for his fair handling of the events, thereby cementing further his leadership position.

22

Daniel Schreiber CEO Lemonade

Daniel Schrieber is the Co-Founder and CEO of Lemonade - a peer-to-peer insurance startup based in New York. Lemonade is known for providing fast and low-cost homeowners' and renters' insurance.

Born in London, he spent the majority of his formative years in Israel, but returned to the UK to attend law school at King's College. Schreiber describes himself cheerfully as a ‘recovering attorney’ after a false start in Law inadvertently led him to the technology space. The move was then a launching pad into the world of insurtech. He says of that time, “I was born and bred in the UK in London and I trained as an attorney. I qualified and I lasted about a year as a corporate commercial attorney doing high tech law. Then in the late ’90s I launched what was my first startup and I’ve been in the tech sector ever since.”

Insurance United States

“It’s not a natural thing for a tech entrepreneur to want to go into insurance. It connotes all the wrong things. It’s perceived as being dull… retro-grade, heavily regulated [and] heavily capital intensive.”

21

Zach Perret

Co-Founder and CEO Plaid

With a company valuation of $13.4bn, Plaid CEO and Co-Founder Zach Perret has come a long way since his days as a junior consultant at Bain. At just 33 years old he is already leading one of the world’s fastest growing fintech companies. Prior to entering the world of finance, he earned a BA in science, physics and chemistry from Duke University.

Perret has also dabbled in medical research. While at Duke, he served as a research fellow. He began his employment in 2006 engaging in the use of software control systems for optical microscopy. The purpose of the research was to shoot lasers at cancer to record the efficiency of removing the cells. He stayed at this post for four years, leaving in 2010.

In 2012 he founded Plaid - which doubled its customer base in 2020 to 4,500. With its cuttingedge platform, Plaid has built up a network spanning 12,000 financial institutions across the US, Canada, UK and Europe. Plaid has also powered 10 billion transactions, enabling millions of consumers and businesses better control over their finances.

20

Henry Ward CEO Carta

Carta Co-Founder and CEO Henry Ward is a wellknown figure on the global fintech leadership circuit. That’s because he is the driving force behind one of the most innovative fintechs today. A brilliant student, Ward graduated from University of Michigan with a BGS in Mathematics and Computer Science and holds a MSC in Market Finance from EDHEC Business School.

Prior to founding Carta, Ward also launched Secondsight, a portfolio optimisation platform for retail investors. He also held leadership positions at Reddwerks Inc. and BetweenMarkets.

Carta revolutionises the way founders, investors, and employees manage equity and ownership. Since launching in 2012, the fintech handles hundreds of billions of dollars in equity. Big industry players including Intercom, Samsara, and Flexport use Carta to provide solutions to fund administration, 409A valuations, cap table management and scenario modelling. The fintech has been included on the Forbes “World’s Best Cloud Companies”, Fast Company's Most Innovative list, and Inc.’s Fastest Growing Private Companies.

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19

Anthony Noto CEO SoFi

Anthony Noto is no stranger to either fintech or the technology industry. A keen sportsman, his previous roles include CFO of the National Fooball League.

Noto graduated from Franklin D. Roosevelt High School in New York. He then attended the US Military Academy at West Point, where he was a star linebacker on the football team, earning All-East and Academic All-American honours.

In 1991, he became the highest-ranked mechanical engineering major in his graduating class. After graduating from Army Ranger School at Fort Benning, he served as a Communications Officer with the 24th Infantry Division in Fort Stewart, Georgia. He joined Goldman Sachs in 1999 - a move that launched his financial career.

As CEO of San Francisco-based SoFi, Noto leads the fintech’s strategy to provide financial products including student and auto loan refinancing, mortgages, personal loans, credit cards, investing, and banking through mobile app and desktop interfaces, to the marketplace.

18

Max Levchin

Co-Founder and CEO

Affirm

Max Levchin, a Ukrainian-American software engineer and businessman, moved the US from Kiev when he was 16 and studied computer science at Illinois University. His mother, uncle, grandfather and other family members, were all physicists - an academic achievement that Levchin says helped the family elevate their position in the difficult, communist era of the 1970s in Russia.

But a career in research wasn't on the cards, instead, Levchin is a tech investor who also advises new tech startups. He saw the potential of technology in financial services and in 1998, co-founded the company Confinity, which merged with Elon Musk's X.com, and eventually became PayPal.

Levchin, who is a computer scientist, is also responsible for the launches of Slide, Inc, SponsorNet New Media, Net Meridian Software, HVF (Hard, Valuable and Fun) and Glow. Today he is Founder and CEO of Affirm - a new breed BNPL fintech that provides customers with transparency, flexibility and no hidden costs or fees.

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17

Simon Paris CEO Finastra

Simon Paris joined Finastra in 2015 and became the company’s CEO just three years later. A veteran of the financial services industry, he has 25 years' experience in sales, management and global leadership, and prior to Finastra, held the role of President, Industry Cloud at SAP. He was also a senior consultant at McKinsey and Company.

He currently chairs the World Trade Board, and is passionate about how technology and open trade can improve financial inclusion.

Paris also serves on the Board of Directors for Everbridge and on the Board of Directors for Thompson Reuters.

He was named a Top 50 Financial Technology CEO by the Financial Technology Report - an accolade he received two years running. He was also recognised for his work in the CEO Today Awards in 2021. Paris also advocates for a healthy work life balance - an aspect that is ingrained into the Finastra core culture.

16Anne Boden CEO Starling Bank

Anne Elizabeth Boden MBE is a Welsh entreprener and the Founder and CEO of Starling - one of the UK’s most successful mobile-only banks.

Prior to launching Starling Bank in 2014, she enjoyed a 30-year career, having held positions at Allied Irish Banks, Royal Bank of Scotland and ABN AMRO.

A qualified computer scientist, she was an early advocate for the use of technology in the financial industry. Her vision sought to disrupt and revolutionise the way banking and financial services operated, and this dream was borne out when she built an app from scratch to help customers manage their finances in real-time.

Boden launched Starling Bank in 2014 and her strategy from the outset involved making the bank a global brand.

As the CEO, she oversees the Executive Leadership Team and is a member of Starling’s Board of Directors. Currently, she sits on the board of UK Finance. Boden was awarded an MBE for her services to the financial and technology industry in 2018.

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15

Pieter Van Der Does CEO and Co-Founder Adyen

Pieter Van Der Does is a Dutch internet entrepreneur and the Co-Founder and CEO of Adyen - the Amsterdam-based payments processing fintech company.

Formerly the CCO at Bibit Global Payment Services, Van Der Does has a Master's in Economics from the University of Amsterdam - and after Bibit GPS was acquired by Royal Bank of Scotland, he remained as a board member until 2006.

That year, he also launched Adyen alongside fellow Co-Founder and billionaire Arnout Schuiff, who took on the role of CTO.

Adyen operates on a ‘subscription to innovation’ basis an area that has been shunned by traditional banks, but embraced by the commercial sector. The success of Adyen is reflected in its swiftly scaling presence that is currently aiming for its one trillionth transaction.

Adyen services some of the biggest technology corporations globally and includes Uber, Netflix, Facebook and Spotify among its impressive client list. According to Forbes, the fintech also has an annual revenue of US$7.1bn - and assets worth $6.1bn.

14

Florian Hagenbuch

Founder and Co-CEO Loft

Florian Hagenbuch, the German-born entreprenuer, is the Founder and Co-CEO of Brazil's leading realestate marketplace, Loft.

In 2008 while working as a junior banker at Goldman Sachs Group in New york, Hagenbuch met Mate Pencz and the two young financiers began to brainstorm business ideas.

The pair moved to Brazil in 2012, which they saw as a launchpad marketplace. They were right, and almost immediately founded Printi - an online printing startup with US investment backers. Within two years, Hagenbuch and Pencz had sold a minority stake in Prini to Vistaprint and the deal saw their company valued at US$50mn.

The success resulted in them deciding to launch Loft in 2018 following their research and experience of the real-estate market.

Residential real-estate transactions in Brazil are often carried out through small, bureaucratic brokers. High interest rates means mortgages remain a fraction of all the loans in the nation. Loft has raised an impressive $700mn in equity since inception, with Andreessen Horowitz one of its earliest backers.

Real-estate Brazil

13

Kristo Käärmann

Founder and CEO Wise

Estonian native Kristo Käärmann has always been an entrepreneur.

He started his first business, an online investments tracking portal Investor.ee in 1999, when he was 19. Although the service was popular at the time, it never turned a profit and was acquired a few years later for an undisclosed amount. Following the sale, he joined Deloitte Consulting and PricewaterhouseCoopers as a management consultant. He later worked with European banks and insurers to modernise their processes and systems. Always driven by innovation and the need for progress, he teamed up with Taavet Hinrikus, then Skype's director of strategy, to develop a new and disruptive system for moving money across borders. Wise (formerly known as TransferWise) was launched in 2010. The company, which provides online international money transfers at massively reduced fees, expanded swiftly. It is reportedly worth US$4.83bn, employs 3,600 staff and serves 10 million customers.

12

Valentin Stalf

Co-Founder and CEO

N26

Born in Vienna in 1985, Valentin Stalf is the CEO and Co-Founder of Europe’s biggest digital bank.

A gifted student with a talent for finance, he studied Business Administration and obtained a Master’s degree in Accounting and Finance at University of St. Gallen. While studying, he worked in a number of fields including Strategy Consulting and Investment Banking, Mergers and Acquisition.

Stalf was also an ‘Entrepreneur in Residence’ for Rocket Internet, a global incubator and investor helping several companies grow in the mobile payments industry. He also worked in strategy consulting and investment banking.

N26 was launched in 2013 by Stalf and his friend and fellow Co-Founder, Maximilian Tayenthal. Then, aged 28, the pair shared a vision that they could build a bank that global users could easily access.

By 2021, N26 had welcomed more than seven million customers across 24 countries. Today it is valued at US$9.3bn.

Stalf continues to lead N26 to new heights, and is currently a member of the advisory board at the Vienna University of Economics and Business.

Financial Services Germany

11

Vlad Tenev Co-Founder Robinhood

Vladimir Tenev, a Bulgarian-American billionaire entrepreneur, co-founded Robinhood, a US-based financial services company, in 2013.

An adept mathematician, he gained his BSc from Stanford and his Master's from UCLA, before entering the world of finance and launching his first two finance companies prior to Robinhood.

Teneve co-founded the commission-free trading platform Robinhood with his friend and classmate Baiju Bhatt. They launched the mobile app to the public in 2015 and in 2018, began raising funds.

An estimated 78% of Robinhood users are under 35. The fintech has proved that young people are increasingly interested in building savings, starting investment portfolios and making trades.

Tenev came under fire in January 2021 following his handling of the Gamestop shares event which saw armchair investors almost crash Wall Street. However, since then, his reputation has recovered and he has been recognised on the Forbes 30 under 30, Inc 30 under 30, and Fortune 40 under 40 lists.

LEADERS IN FINTECH

10 TOP ten

10

Sebastian Siemiatkowski Co-Founder and CEO Klarna

Those who know Siemiatkowski recognise him as a survivor. He is also no stranger to hardship, despite the fact that he hit billionaire status by the age of 40.

Born in Sweden in 1981 and the son of Polish immigrants, his parents were academics who had fled the USSR communist regime for Sweden just 12 months earlier in 1980. The early years were beset with heartache. Money was tight and his mother also suffered from debilitating back problems.

Siemiatkowski’s father drove a taxi to make ends meet.

But despite these hardships, Siemiatkowski proved himself to be a talented student. After high school, he enrolled at the Stockholm School of Economics.

Inspired by fintech, he joined forces with the company’s other Co-Founders, Niklas Adalberth and Victor Jacobsson, to initially launch Klarna in 2005.

Today, he is an angel investor and entrepreneur as well as one

of the most respected figures in fintech.

“As investor sentiment shifts it is time to return to profitability. But now we are doing so on a global platform, 150 million users, over 20 markets and 400k partners.”

09

The CEO of Ripple Labs, Brad Garlinghouse is a veteran of the tech industry and has led some of the largest companies in the space during his high-flying career.

He started out initially with stints at Home Network - a highspeed cable internet provider - and as a GP at the VC firm @ Ventures. He also served as Senior Vice President at Yahoo! from 2003 to 2008.

Garlinghouse ran the

Homepage, Flickr, Yahoo! Mail, and Yahoo! Messenger divisions.

During his time at Yahoo, Garlinghouse also wrote the industry famous internal memo known as the 'Peanut Butter Manifesto'. In it, he called for the company to focus on its core business, rather than spreading itself too thin - like peanut butter.

His current position at Ripple Labs began in 2016. By 2019, he had taken the company to new heights - including a $200mn

series C funding round which included investors such as Tetragon, SBI Ventures and Route 66 Ventures.

A firm supporter of the NFT marketplace, Garlinghouse says the non-fungible token sector will improve if it does not have to rely on the gas fees of Ethereum.

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Brad Garlinghouse CEO Ripple

“We are all products of our experiences, good and bad. Sometimes you learn as much from the negative experiences as you do from the positive.”

08

Sergio Furio Founder and CEO Creditas

As the Founder and CEO of Creditas, Brazil’s leading online lending platform, Sergio Furio heads up one of the highest-funded fintech companies in Latin America.

The high-octane hustle and bustle of global finance is a far cry from his humble roots - a small village in Valencia, Spain.

Furio’s family moved to the cosmopolitan city of Barcelona, where he completed his education and discovered a love of the finance and commerce.

He says: “I was totally into numbers and very analytical. I made a radical move in the last couple of months of my university and decided to apply for banking, and joined Deutsche Bank in Spain’s investment banking team over in large corporates and spent five years there.”

Today, Creditas has received over US$80mn in funding from VCs and has a 480-strong staff. The company uses customer’s assets as collateral in a process that has

reinvented Brazil’s traditionally costly lending processes.

“I remember the first conversation with my parents in saying, “I’m going to be doing this.” And they’re like, “You’re going to do what?!” Entrepreneurship has never been in my family.”

07

TS Anil Global CEO Monzo Bank

With 27 years' experience within the banking and financial industry, TS Anil is a banking heavyweight. He is also a highly respected financial services and payments leader and the global CEO of Monzo, one of the world’s fastest growing challenger banks.

He grew up in India, and enjoyed what he describes as an idyllic childhood with his social worker mother and military father, which took him across the continent as the family moved

Banking United Kingdom

from one military base to another.

He originally considered becoming a doctor, but almost fell into finance when when he was offered a job with Citi following his graduation in economics from Shri Ram College of Commerce in 1991. He later went on to obtain an MBA from the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad in 1993.

A passionate advocate of financial inclusion and one of the first people of colour to run a UK bank, he intends to disrupt the

industry as much as possible with an array of new product launches on the horizon.

“As much as it can feel like our competition is other fintech players, the reality is that the vast majority of revenues and customers are still with the incumbents.”

06

Samantha Ku COO Square

One of fintech’s leading female COOs, the climb to success hasn’t always been easy for Samantha Ku. After graduating from the University of Miami as a 21-year old, in the middle of an economic recession, she was deeply in debt and found the employment market unforgiving. Of that time, she recalls it was, "a perfect storm of emotion to end the greatest college experience anyone could have". But despite a period of turmoil that came after attending

50 job interviews without any seeming success, Citibank offered Ku her first position in the financial industry with a job in New York in 2010.

She later joined Square in 2015 as Head of Operations and has risen through the ranks to her current position of COO.

As the Head of Operations for Square Capital, Ku also built and led several teams foundational to the Square Capital programme product suite and expanded the

team to 100+ employees across San Francisco, New York, Las Vegas, and Melbourne, Australia.

“My husband is my tough love critic… I would not have taken the leap of faith from a stable career in banking to joining a tech company had he not encouraged me to take the risk.”

05

John Collison President and Co-Founder Stripe

President and Co-Founder of the world’s most successful ecommerce payments platform, John Collison is a leading figure in the financial industry. But this young and innovative founder started off small, and began his path to greatness in a rural village in Ireland, where he grew up.

Along with his brother Patrick (CEO of Stripe) the duo began to investigate how they could fix the sluggish business of online transactions.

Their first platform was launched in 2010 - when John was just 19 and it addressed the clunky payments challenges retailers faced when taking their businesses online. Despite the launch, Collison started at Harvard Business School to study physics, but dropped out the following year and headed to Silicon Valley to join Patrick, who was managing a swiftly scaling Stripe.

By 2013, following a successful beta launch in the US the previous

year, Stripe raised $18mn from investors that included Sequoia Capital. It was also valued at $100mn.

Stripe has since skyrocketed into the highest echelons of the financial services industry.

In 2021, the company was valued at US$95bn. According to Forbes, John Collison has an estimated personal net worth of $9.5bn - and in 2016, he was also the world’s youngest self-made billionaire.

04

Nik Storonsky Founder and CEO Revolut

Nik Storonsky has a story almost as colourful as his meteoric rise within the financial industry.

Born in 1984 in a town just north of Moscow’s city centre, he grew up in a Russia that was newly divorced from the Cold War and Communism and embracing Western-style democracy and a free market economy.

Storonsky excelled academically, studying for a Master’s degree in Physics at Moscow University, and also

taking a second Master's in Economics at the New Economic School in Moscow. He is also a keen athlete and during his teenage years, he became a state champion swimmer, and took boxing lessons.

He started working as a financial trader for Lehman Brothers and then later, for Credit Suisse. In 2015, he launched Revolut, which echoed the new digital neobank startups emerging within Asia.

The bank is now the most valuable fintech in the UK. In 2021, a Series E funding round led by Japan’s SoftBank and Tiger Global Management raised $800mn and saw the then six-year-old fintech hit a jackpot valuation of $33bn.

In July 2022, Revolut joined forces with fellow fintech decacorn Stripe.

“Effectively when you run all the infrastructure in-house, you can actually make money out of this business, and the business becomes quite profitable.”

“I want to make sure we're hiring the people and grooming the right set of investors who can help think about the long-term vision.”

03

Emilie Choi

President and Chief Operating Officer Coinbase

An economics graduate from Johns Hopkins University, Emilie Choi holds an MBA from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.

A dynamic and innovative business leader, she helped build the Coinbase exchange alongside the company’s founder and CEO, Brian Armstrong. Choi is also a keen angel investor and has taken part in a number of seed, Series A and B funding rounds for several successful fintech startups.

Prior to Coinbase, Choi served as LinkedIn’s Vice President of Corporate Development, overseeing more than 40 transactions at LinkedIn, including the acquisitions of Lynda, Bright, Newsle, Connectifier, Slideshare and Fliptop, as well as LinkedIn’s JV in China and strategic investments in Cornerstone On Demand and G2 Crowd.

Her reputation as an advocate for founders through every step of the MandA process made her the perfect fit for Coinbase because she has an outstanding record of building strong relationships with founders and

in creating environments where entrepreneurs can continue to execute on their vision within larger companies.

Cryptocurrency aside, some of her primary business interests include consumer internet, SaaS, MandA, venture investments, corporate strategy, business operations, business development and data analytics. With an estimated personal net worth of US$241.4mn, the sky is the limit for this dynamic COO.

Indeed, when Coinbase completed its 10th year in business, it elicited this positive tweet from Choi: “Coinbase is 10 years old. Some highs and lows, but I couldn’t be more optimistic about what we’re building. It’s just the beginning.”

In relation to the fluctuations in cryptocurrency, she says of the Coinbase exchange: “We have a trading model that generates a tonne of revenue for us. We love that model and we’re totally OK with the volatility of it.”

02Anthony Tan Group CEO and Co-Founder Grab

As the CEO and Co-Founder of Grab, Southeast Asia’s most successful ride-hailing company, and the region’s first ever unicorn, Anthony Tan has enjoyed skyrocketing success in the world of fintech.

Headquartered in Singapore, Grab is classed as a multinational technology company. The basis of its innovation is the Grab superapp, which provides users with transportation, food delivery and digital payments services via a mobile app.

Born into one of Malaysia’s wealthiest families, Tan’s father is the CEO of Tan Chong Motor Holdings Bhd, which is also one of Malaysia’s largest automobile distributors and Nissan’s sole distributor in Malaysia.

His eureka moment came when a fellow HBS classmate complained to Tan about the inefficient state of the taxi industry in Malaysia. He then entered the HBSl New Venture Competition in 2011 with an idea that would reform the space. He was a runner up and used

his prize of $25,000 to launch his mobile superapp, which was originally branded MyTeksi.

MyTeksi was rebranded as Grab and currently offers its services in eight countries, with offshoots into delivery services, software RandD and motorcycle taxis.

“At Grab, I am blessed to be surrounded by a team of sharp, driven and humble individuals who want to make a massive impact."

"At Nubank I was determined to create a working environment without all the stupid barriers that are very detrimental to women’s care."

01

Cristina Junqueira Co-Founder Nubank

Financial innovator and fintech founder Cristina Junqueira is famous among the Latin American banking fraternity. Not only did she smash the glass ceiling in the fiercely maleorientated environment of the Brazilian financial industry, but her contributions have helped launch a new wave of digital banking and finance in the region.

Prior to the launch of Nubank, which was a collaborative effort between Junqueira and her two Co-Founders, David Vélez and Edward Wible, bank customers in Brazil had little choice but to fall in with the demands of the incumbent banks, all of which charged high fees for all services. Such exorbitant expenses drained precious resources from hard working families, and maintained, rather than aided, the financial inclusion gap.

A mother-of-two and qualified engineer, Junqueira helped launch Nubank in 2013 following several years of experience spent within Brazil’s leading financial companies.

As a young post graduate, her first foray into finance was as an associate consultant at the Boston Consulting Group. During this time, she also completed her Master’s degree in Economic and Financial Modelling – a course that was to set her on track for her spectacular banking career.

In 2007, Junqueira was selected for the One-Year Accelerated Programme at the Kellogg School of Management in the US. She joined Unibanco, which merged with Brazil’s second-largest private bank, Itaú, in 2009 to create a financial giant. By 2012, she had risen to the position of portfolio manager for the Itaúcard.

The experience solidified her passion to make changes in the Brazilian banking world. Nubank now serves an estimated 45 million customers. It has been predicted to increase its valuation to $126bn by 2025.

The Corporate Storyteller for the World’s Largest Companies