Speakers Biography

Leonardo Gambacorta is the Head of the Emerging Markets unit at the BIS. Prior to his current role, he served as Head of Innovation and Digital Economy (2019-2024), Research Adviser (2014-2018) and Head of Monetary Policy (2010-12) in the Monetary and Economic Department. Before joining the BIS, he was Head of the Money and Credit Unit (2007-2009) and Head of the Banking Sector Unit (2004-2006) in the Research Department of the Bank of Italy. He was a visiting scholar at the National Bureau of Economic Research (2002–03). Leonardo holds an MSc in Economics from the University of Warwick and a PhD in Economics from the University of Pavia. His primary research interests include monetary transmission mechanisms, the effectiveness of macroprudential policies in curbing systemic risk, and the effects of technological innovation on financial intermediation. He is a research fellow of the Centre for Economic Policy Research.

Yushi Peng is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Finance at Tilburg University. She received her Ph.D. in Finance from the University of Zurich and the Swiss Finance Institute. She was also a visiting fellow in the Department of Economics at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). Her research focuses on financial intermediation, household finance, and empirical industrial organization. She studies how financial institutions shape credit allocation and household decisions, with a particular focus on banking, lending markets, and housing. Her work combines structural modeling and applied microeconometrics, using detailed administrative and financial data to study policy-relevant questions. 

Giovanni Soggia is an economist at the Bank of Italy. He has been working at the Cagliari Branch since 2012 and currently serves as Deputy Head of the Economic Analysis and Research Division. He holds a BSc and an MSc in Economic and Social Sciences from Bocconi University, and an MPhil in Economic Theory and Econometrics from the Toulouse School of Economics. His research interests include banking, corporate finance, entrepreneurship, and innovation.

Clément Mazet-Sonilhac is an Assistant Professor at Bocconi University and a Research Fellow at the Economics of Innovation Lab at the Collège de France and at IGIER. Previously, he worked as a research economist at Banque de France and was a visiting researcher at MIT Sloan. He received his PhD in Economics from Sciences Po in Paris in 2022.

His research focuses on two main areas: technological change and financial intermediation. He combines applied econometrics, structural modeling, and machine learning to study topics including innovation, climate change, and poverty reduction. His work has been published in the American Economic Review, the Journal of International Economics, and the Journal of Labor Economics.

Diana joined NatWest in June 2024 to lead the architectural transformation and simplification of the Bank. She is now the Chief Information Officer for Retail, Digital X & Enterprise Architecture. In this role, she leads the technology strategy, engineering and architecture agenda for the Retail business while also driving enterprise-wide architectural direction and simplification. Diana is focused on harnessing technology, data and AI to deliver better outcomes for customers and colleagues, whilst enabling the modernisation and resilience of NatWest's technology landscape.

Diana previously worked for Bupa, having joined them in January 2021 as their Chief Technology Officer. This was following ten years at BP, where after her initial appointment as Chief Infrastructure Architect she held several IT leadership roles, until February 2017 when she was appointed Vice President, Strategy, Architecture and Planning for BP. 

Prior to BP, Diana was Head of Architecture and Technology for British Gas, part of the Centrica group, where she led the solutions team for the retail transformation of British Gas. Diana started her career in consulting, firstly with Boston Consulting Group and subsequently PwC, where she held senior design and architecture roles, predominantly in the financial services and insurance sector.

Diana holds a degree in Mechanical Engineering, a post-graduate degree in Computer Science from the University of London and an MBA from Henley Business School. She has three children and competes for Great Britain in Masters Athletics in her spare time.

Simone di Castri has spent two decades reimagining and building inclusive, high-impact digital institutions that strengthen public governance and deliver real-worldbresults. He is a mission-driven, globally recognised leader developing the infrastructure layer for agile, AI-ready public agencies—focused on architecting the digital control towers of government.

Simone is the Co-Founder and CEO of Digital Transformation Solutions (DTS), a deeptech company powering digital transformation in public agencies, and Co-Founder and Co-Director of the Cambridge SupTech Lab at the University of Cambridge. He brings 19 years of experience leading transformation across banking, telecoms, payments, and public-sector technology.

A repeat intrapreneur, Simone has designed and scaled innovative programmes inside multilateral institutions, development agencies, and academic centres—operating with the speed and creativity of a startup founder. He has led high-stakes engagements with the World Bank, United Nations, GSMA, IDLO, and BFA Global, delivering results for partners including the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), European Central Bank, New York State Department of Financial Services, Visa, Meta, World Economic Forum, Mastercard Foundation, UK FCDO, USAID, ADB, IDB, and dozens of central banks, fintechs, and ministries of finance.

He has pioneered several ground-breaking initiatives:

•  RegTech for Regulators Accelerator (R2A) – backed by the Gates Foundation,

Omidyar Network, and USAID

• Cambridge SupTech Lab - a globally recognised accelerator for digital financial

supervision

• GSMA Code of Conduct for Mobile Money Providers – now a global industry

benchmark

• Consumer Empowerment & Market Conduct working group of the Alliance for

Financial Inclusion (AFI)

As an educator, Simone taught Digital Citizenship & Development at The Fletcher School at Tufts University. He holds a PhD in Law & Economics and is a frequent keynote speaker in the suptech and govtech communities, with over 20,000 downloads on SSRN. Over the past eight years, Simone has managed global teams, raised and deployed over $20 million in programme and product funding, and is currently leading the launch of GovSpace—a platform designed to digitise, connect, and transform public-sector institutions around the world.

Trystan is the Group Head of Data & AI Science at Lloyds Banking Group, where he leads the Data & AI science practitioner community and works closely with senior leaders to identify and deliver high-impact, innovative use cases while accelerating the Group’s AI capability.

He is a senior Data Science and AI leader with over 20 years’ experience delivering transformative change. Prior to joining Lloyds, Trystan delivered data science solutions across a range of industries, including developing optimisation algorithms for NATO convoy routing, influencing the design of Heathrow Terminal 5, and building pricing optimisation systems for British Airways.

Mehmet Bakkaloglu is a Principal Solutions Architect at Amazon Web Services (AWS). He works across global software partners, leading on strategic initiatives such as AI adoption, sovereignty, and global expansion. He has 20+ years of experience in the tech industry, and prior to AWS, he worked in consultancy where he led large data analytics programs in multiple sectors, including finance, healthcare and utilities. He received his M.Sc. from Carnegie Mellon University in the US, and B.Sc. from Bogazici University in Turkey.

Rui Almeida is a Research Assistant at the Deutsche Bundesbank and the Leibniz Institute for Financial Research SAFE. He also contributes to the International Banking Research Net-work (IBRN). He is a PhD candidate in Economics at Goethe University Frankfurt. Prior to his current roles, he worked in banking supervision at the European Central Bank (ECB) and conducted policy-oriented research at the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (UN ESCAP). His research lies broadly in empirical banking, with a particular focus on how innovation and monetary policy shape banks’ liabilities, funding deci-sions, and financial intermediation.

Valerie Laturnus is an Assistant Professor of Finance at Durham University, where she joined the faculty in January 2024. She holds a PhD in Financial Economics from Goethe University Frankfurt. Her research focuses on FinTech and blockchain economics, especially the economic mechanisms underlying decentralized finance. She has extensive experience working with large-scale blockchain data and has also shared her expertise on the Blockchain Scholars Podcast.

Wilbur Chen is an Assistant Professor of Accounting at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) Business School and Co-Director of the Center for Securities Analysis with Financial Technology. His core research agenda examines how digital and artificial intelligence technologies affect capital markets, with particular emphasis on firm valuation and information dynamics. His other research focuses on corporate governance and business reorganizations, including divestitures and spin-offs. Across these areas, his work explores how technological change, information frictions, and corporate decisions shape firm value, market outcomes, and the production and use of financial information. Wilbur earned his PhD in Business Administration from Harvard University in 2022, an MPhil in Accountancy from the Chinese University of Hong Kong, and a BSc in Physics from McGill University. His work has been presented at major international academic conferences, and his research and broader writing have appeared in leading accounting journals and business publications, including the Review of Accounting Studies, the Journal of Accounting Research, and Harvard Business Review.

Joe Yanxiong Gong is a Lecturer in Banking at Bayes Business School, which he joined in 2024 after completing his PhD in Finance at Warwick Business School. His research interests span banking, financial regulation, corporate finance, and security design. His main research examines the design of bail-in securities and how these instruments affect bank incentives and financial stability. More broadly, he is interested in bank resolution, regulatory capital, and the design of financial contracts. He also studies the adoption of artificial intelligence in financial services, with a particular focus on its implications for firms’ demand for human capital. His work aims to contribute to the understanding of how financial institutions respond to regulatory and technological change.

Daniel Flatt is an editor at The Banker, part of the Financial Times. An award-winning financial journalist, he has more than 20 years’ global experience making complex financial, regulatory and technological subjects clear for senior audiences. He has interviewed policymakers, economists, central bankers, CEOs and political leaders, and is known for translating intricate systems — from capital markets and ESG to geopolitics — into readable, decision-useful journalism.

He is the founding editor of The Corporate Treasurer, which he launched to serve corporate banking, payments and treasury professionals. He later led editorial teams across Asia-Pacific working for Haymarket, and was editor-in-chief and founding editor of Capital Monitor (New Statesman Media Group). Daniel also co-founded Flare, creating an AI-driven insight platform that turns structured financial datasets into written and visual analysis for editorial and business clients, including the FT. He works in in London.

Domhnall leads the Central Bank's supervision of banks, credit unions, retail credit and credit servicing, and payment and e-money firms across all the Bank's regulatory and supervisory responsibilities: consumer and investor interests, safety and soundness, integrity of the system, and financial stability.

Appointed Director of Banking & Payments in January 2025, Domhnall brings more than two decades of regulatory expertise. He previously served as Director of Insurance Supervision, overseeing the regulation of 200 life, non-life and reinsurance firms and representing the Bank at the EIOPA Board of Supervisors. His career at the Central Bank has also included roles as Head of Anti-Money Laundering Division and Head of General Insurance Supervision.

Before joining the Central Bank in 2003, Domhnall was Head of Investigations and Compliance at the Irish Pensions Regulator, following over a decade in the life and pensions industry. He currently serves as the Bank's alternate member at the ECB Supervisory Board.

Domhnall holds an MBS in Business Practice, the QFA FLIA designation, a Diploma in Corporate Governance, and is a Qualified Pensions Trustee

Dr. Stefan Kerbl is a Principal Expert in the Financial Stability and Macroprudential Supervision Division of the Oesterreichische Nationalbank (OeNB), where he works on systemic risk, macroprudential capital buffers, contagion, financial regulation and stress testing. His recent work examines the financial-stability implications of artificial intelligence, including its potential effects on banks, market dynamics and supervisory practice. Before joining the OeNB’s current policy work, he served as a Principal Expert in the ECB’s Single Supervisory Mechanism, contributing to the 2014 Asset Quality Review and European stress test. He is also a visiting lecturer at the University of Vienna and the University of Applied Sciences, teaching courses in macroprudential supervision, international macroeconomics and applied time-series analysis. Stefan is a SUERF Fellow and has published widely on banking, credit risk, regulation and financial stability

Marine Krasovska is a Latvian financial sector leader known for her expertise in financial innovation. Before joining the regulator, Marine built substantial experience in the banking sector, working in senior roles at major Baltic banks including SEB, DNB, Luminor. I In 2020, Marine joined the Financial and Capital Market Commission (FCMC) of Latvia as Director of the Financial Innovation Department. Following the merger of the FCMC into Latvijas Banka in January 2023, she became Head of the Financial Technology Supervision Department, leading oversight of payment services, crypto-asset services, crowdfunding services, horizontal ITC risk supervision across the financial sector and run SupTech development program.

Marine holds a Master’s Degree in Finance (University of Latvia) and a professional diploma in Management (the Open University Business School). She has completed the EUI Central Banking and Banking supervision Executive program, Oxford Strategic Innovation Programme, and the Innovations and AI program at INSEAD.

She has spoken at numerous fintech events internationally, advocating for collaborative dialogue between regulators and fintech innovators. She shares insights on financial innovation as guest lecturer at Riga Technical University’s Riga Business School.