How the PSR Panel works

Input from industry experts helps inform our work

The Payment Systems Regulator (PSR) Panel is established by statute and is independent to the PSR. The Panel's role is to contribute towards the effective development of the PSR's strategy and policy and offer advice and early input on the PSR's work.

The panel is made up of members drawn from payments system operators, payments service providers, infrastructure and technology providers and service users including consumer, large and small business representatives. 

The Panel

  • provides feedback on the PSR’s work
  • brings forward relevant issues for discussion
  • identifies areas for research
  • considers how best the PSR can meet its objectives

The views of the Panel are independent of the PSR and the panel is assisted by a secretariat team within the FCA.

PSR Panel recruitment process

No current vacancies.

Reference documents

PSR Panel terms of reference

Annual Reports

Read the PSR Panel 2021/22 annual report

Read the PSR Panel 2020/21 annual report

Read the PSR Panel 2019/20 annual report

Read the PSR Panel 2018/19 annual report

Read the PSR Panel 2017/18 annual report

Read the PSR Panel 2016/17 annual report

Read the PSR Panel 2015/16 annual report

 

This position is currently vacant. 

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.

A seasoned speaker at conferences and events, he has also delivered many training workshops across Europe for the major payment networks.  His consulting assignments cover multi-payment products with a broad spectrum of retailers, issuers, acquirers and payment schemes across the globe. His recent focus has been helping clients with their strategies and approach to navigate the impact, opportunities and threats to their business from PSD2 together with the development of a two-year comprehensive benchmark study of UK mobile banking and finance apps.

Jo is Head of Government Banking and the Assistant Paymaster General with responsibility for leading a commercially viable cross-government shared service which delivers the operational and strategic banking and payment needs of approx. 800 central government departments.  Working with HM Treasury she ensures the smooth flow of annual transactions totalling approx. £2trillion.

Jo chairs the pan government senior officials group designed to bring key decision makers together to ensure a co-ordinated approach to payment industry change and innovation. She is also the government representative on the Pay.UK End User Council and CHAPS Strategic Advisory Forum. Prior to her role in payments Jo worked extensively in the change arena, focussing specifically on commercial, digital and IT change projects. A big champion of talent management, Jo is very active in cross-government mentoring. 

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. 

She is a founding director and driver of The Inclusion Foundation (TIF), a not-for-profit company seeking to help under-served customers get the best from their finances through the use of the most effective payment products and services. She is also a Trustee of the Money Charity, the financial capability charity, which provides education, information, advice and guidance to people of all ages throughout the UK.

Anne has a strong track record of achievement as a Director and senior leader with Pay.UK (formerly Bacs) and across the wider EPA community as an Advisory Board member. Her role at the center of national payments has given her a unique perspective on the challenges faced by the ecosystem in responding to fast changing consumer needs.  Anne constantly challenges the traditional payments model across a range of services and supports stakeholders to achieve step change in their business.

At Bacs Anne led strategy and steered product development of the UK’s retail payment products and services including Direct Debit, Bacs Direct Credit, Current Account Switch Service and Cash ISA account switching services. Anne’s entrepreneurship and influence shaped the future of these highly successful initiatives which have been adopted by the financial services industry, consumers and businesses globally. 

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.

Natasha is the co-author of The Pay Off, how changing the way we pay changes everything. The former Head of Corporate Affairs at SWIFT, the global provider of secure financial messaging services, she led SWIFT’s global communications, government affairs, public policy and regulatory functions from 2012-2019. She joined Swift from LCH.Clearnet, the UK-based clearing house, where she served as Head of Public Affairs.

Natasha previously worked as a journalist for 10 years, specialising in financial regulation, market structures and complex financial instruments. Prior to that she worked in the Derivatives, Repo, Government Bond and Swap markets in Madrid and London.

Natasha is a former Board Member of the Information Technology Industry Council and member of the European Commission’s Payment Systems Markets Expert Group. She also served two terms on the European Securities and Markets Authority’s (ESMA) Post Trade Standing Committee.

Natasha has also been a member of the Financial Services Consumer Panel since June 2020 and she sits on the Bank of England and HM Treasury’s CBDC Engagement Forum.

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.