How the PSR Panel works

Ruth has wide ranging experience in payments, banking, market infrastructure and investment in the UK, Europe and internationally. She has gained considerable experience as board member of new and established organisations (Digital Identity Net, LSEG, Permanent TSB) as well as chair of working groups and multi-stakeholder forums (European Payments Council, European Banking Federation etc). She has had considerable engagement in regulation and policy as an executive leader and more recently as an advisor. Ruth was previously a member of the Bank of England’s RTGS Renewal Stakeholder Advisory Group and of the Payment Strategy Forum (2015 – 2016).  Ruth has a strong interest and knowledge of fintech and regtech. She is a Partner in a venture capital fund (Gauss) that invests in start-ups globally. She has acquired various accolades including the Women in Fintech Powerlist, Fintech Power 50 and previously Sunday Times’ 35 Women Under 35.

Andrew has worked in the European cards and payments industry for over a decade in product and technical roles at FIS, Vocalink and TSYS. He is currently the Director of Payment and Data Solutions at FIS where he is the business lead for the ‘Payments as a Service’ solution which provides access to Bacs, CHAPS, Faster Payments and SCT Inst. In 2016, he was instrumental in FIS becoming one of the first accredited technical aggregators for the Faster Payments scheme. His remit includes industry engagement, sitting on the Faster Payments Development Committee, speaking at industry events on Payments/GDPR and delivering the response to consultations from industry bodies such as the PSR.  At VocaLink, Andrew was one of the original team at Zapp/Pay by Bank app, the UK mobile payment scheme based on ‘Request to Pay’ invoking a Faster Payment. 

Mark is a fellow of the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants. Operating across commercial finance, strategic change and business transformation he has 20+ years’ experience in the Payments business. His time client side was spent with Marks & Spencer Money as a key member of the team that successfully launched the largest ever retail card conversion in Europe and at Capital One Bank where he helped to shape and develop the financial planning function for the UK entry.

Jeff has worked within the retail sector for over 25 years, and he is passionate about SME’s and their role in the community and the UK Economy in general. Sitting previously on Boards of European, Far East and well as UK Business he brings vast experience of the retail sector and the challenges it currently faces. He is the Commercial Director of Bira – the British Independent Retail Association and Managing Director of its Procurement Company. He Chairs the BRC Payments Advisory Group and plays an active role championing the SME sector in the retail payments arena to promote awareness and adoption of the new payments landscape. 

Recognised as the 2019 Emerging Payments Awards’ Contributor of the Year and a senior leader under the Innovate Finance Women in Playtech Power list, Anne champions diversity. She is a judge for the Emerging Payments Association (EPA) and European Women’s Payment Network (EWPN) Awards, and an advocate for HM Treasury’s Women in Finance Charter. Anne canvasses contributions from the broadest audience possible to drive positive change in financial services. 

Robin Abrams is Chair of Banking & Finance Policy at the Federation of Small Businesses (FSB), which represents over 170,000 UK SME members. The FSB is the UK`s largest grassroots campaigning group promoting and protecting the interests of small business owners and the self-employed.

Robin is also Director of Trade Finance Global (TFG), the leading fintech platform for the trade and receivables finance industry. TFG focuses on cross-border trade, correspondent banking, and payments. He also sits on the Trade & Investment Taskforce for the B20, contributing to policy development for the G20. 

Prior to this, Robin worked in quants and equity research at Citigroup and Berenberg. He has a Master's degree in Chemical & Energy Engineering from the University of Birmingham.

Stephen has been leading market engagement and the delivery of regulatory requirements with respect to Open Banking/Finance at NatWest Group for 6 the past years. His career spans product management, tactical and strategic planning, and transformation delivery roles in banking and telecommunications. He has a keen interest in payment strategy and policy from his experience in card issuing, card acquiring, PAYG top-ups, digital payments, ATMs, and account to account payments.

Clare is an experienced strategic payment professional with many years of experience in all aspects of the payments and banking industry. Currently for EPAM she sits in the Open Banking & Payments practice and assists clients with consulting, designing and works closely with the engineering teams as a conduit to building solutions.

She has experience of delivering strategic and technical initiatives for global expansion programmes and e-commerce, omni channel, APM’s, pay in and pay-out models, domestic and international schemes across multiple channels and gateways.

She has delivered large scale Global projects and programmes and led transformational change teams within Payments, as well as previously holding operational and Product management roles within Global payment services, Trade Finance, Treasury & Cash Management.

Prior to joining EPAM, Clare was a Transformation Director for Worldpay from FIS helping them to align strategies and deliver wide scale change across multiple acquired businesses and sectors. Clare is also a SAFe 5.0 Practitioner certified in agile frameworks.

Otto Benz is Payments Director for Nationwide Building Society, which he joined in 2021. He is responsible for delivering valuable and resilient payments experiences to its members, as well as influencing across the UK payments industry. He looks after all forms of payments processing at the Society, as well as Open Banking. Previously Otto has held lead roles for payments at other financial institutions.

Otto is a graduate of Queens’ College Cambridge, where he read engineering, and he is a Chartered Engineer and a Fellow of Institution of Engineering and Technology. He has developed his career at IBM, Swiss Bank, Accenture, Virgin Money and Lloyds Banking Group.

Otto has been a Director of BACS and Payments UK, and he participated in the Strategy Forum of the Payments Systems Regulator, where he co-chaired the workstream in charge of creating the vision for the New Payments Architecture. Otto now sits of a number of industry bodies coordinating action in payments and access to cash including at UK Finance, and for Pay.UK’s New Payments Architecture programme.

Ciaran O’Malley is VP of financial services and e-commerce at Trustly and is also the UK country manager. Ciaran joined in 2016 and in addition to his commercial responsibilities has led Trustly’s contributions to the OBIE’s industry engagement. He is a former investment banker at Nomura, Soc Gen, and Credit Suisse.

With more than 25 years in financial services & technology, Neira believes in change through innovation & partnerships and always strives to demystify the hype surrounding current issues. She advises organisations of all sizes on payments, fintech, regtech, cybercrime, information security, fraud and regulations. As a strategic board advisor and non-executive director, she takes great pride in working with innovative companies and contributing to their growth. Her coaching & training services include the popular live Payments 101, Regulations 101 & Crypto 101 courses, and her e-learning platform at https://neirajones.thinkific.com/. She also provides payment security expert witness services and helps with M&As cybersecurity due diligence. She likes engaging on social media & as a professional speaker, regularly addresses global audiences in person or virtually.

She is part of the Advisory Committee for PCI-Pal, a global leader in secure payments, chairs the Advisory Board for mobile innovator Ensygnia and is the National Lead for Payments at the Federation of Small Businesses (FSB).

Neira has previously worked for Barclaycard, Santander, Abbey National, Oracle Corp. and Unisys. Her clients span industry sectors, including financial services, fintech, retail, legal, consulting, information security & technology.

David has over 25 years’ experience in digital payments and broader financial services.  David has been with Visa for nearly 15 years, he has worked in a variety of roles leading business development and strategic deals across UK & Northern Europe as well as managing teams looking after some of Visa’s largest clients in the UK.

His current role sees him overseeing the structures of the commercial relationships with the many organisations Visa partners within the UK & Irish markets. As well as focusing on the commercial aspects this role requires David to have a deep understanding of a number of external factors such as regulation, tax and competition law.

David joined Visa from Goldfish (a Barclaycard subsidiary), a monoline credit card business where he managed a portfolio of co-brand programmes. Prior to that Visa David worked as a consultant advising organisations on building successful distribution partnerships to bring products and services (ranging from credit cards to insurance to utilities) to market through co-brand and affinity relationships. 

David began his career in the General Insurance industry working with Guardian Royal  Exchange, today now part of the Axa Group. David is in his second term as an active member of the CBI Council for London.

Chris Ainsley has worked in the fraud and economic crime industry for over 20 years, with extensive experience of payment ecosystems, transformation programmes and technical change management. He is currently Head of Fraud Risk Management at Santander. He has wide-ranging knowledge of fraud prevention and detection solutions across retail and transactional banking and has been an active and leading member of fraud industry collaborations for many years.

For the past 7 years, Chris has been directly involved in the development of the financial industry response to Authorised Push Payment Fraud, including the evolution of the APP Contingent Reimbursement Model (CRM), UK Finance ‘Best Practice Standards’ and wider industry strategies to mitigate this fraud type.

Chris has also found himself in an unusual position for a fraud manager, as a media spokesperson for Fraud Prevention on behalf of his current employer; his appearances include national coverage on TV (Rip-Off Britain, Sky News, Crimewatch, ITV Tonight) and National Radio (Radio 4 You and Yours, World at One, Moneybox Live) plus extensive local radio interviews on fraud topics and consumer advice in this area.