Speakers
Fraud in Financial Services APAC | 9th December

Abhijeet Singh has over 15 years in fraud & identity domain and he’s currently leading product management of TeleSign solutions which help digital businesses measure and fight fraud and other user trust & safety issues while achieving trackable results. 

In addition to product management, he also played multi-interface roles and have been known for building strong relationships with teams within a technology driven organizations, both vertically and horizontally. 

Abhijeet brings in working global exposure with companies spanning over 130+ countries, including but not limited to eCommerce & Marketplaces, Communications, Financial & Lending, Travel & Hospitality, Gaming, Contact Center, Gig Economy, Social, Insurance, Enterprises and Technology partners.

Christine is a staunch believer in integrating risk-based management systems and programs to ensure the full coverage and holistic management of risks. She has a unique 10-year background in risk management, project management and strategic planning. She has helped companies define and roll-out their integrated risk and business continuity programs. 

Today, she serves as the Data Protection Officer and Assistant Vice President for Risk Management of Aboitiz Equity Ventures. Prior to AEV, she was a Project Manager under Aboitiz InfraCapital where she worked on rail, airport and water projects. She worked in the financial services sector and was affiliated with UnionBank and Citibank. She was also a lecturer in the Ateneo de Manila University where she taught business track courses in their European Studies program. 

She completed her MBA with distinction from the Asian Institute of Management in 2014 where she majored in Finance. Apart from these, she holds several certifications. She is a PARIMA-ANZIIF Certified Risk Professional, a Crisis Management Certified Expert by BCMI, BCM professional certified by the Business Continuity Institute (CBCI) and a Data Privacy Certified Professional under TÜV Rheinland. 

Choon Hong leads the Asia Pacific and Middle East Financial Crime Practice Group in Moody’s Analytics, and is responsible for driving compliance-related initiatives in the region. He is active in the compliance community across both public and private sectors, including in the banking and corporate space, and understands the emerging trends in combating financial crimes through these interactions.

Choon Hong acts as a consultant to Fortune 500 clients on risk-based approaches to anti-money laundering (AML) and supply chain, and leads data-mapping workshops to help compliance departments operationalize the use of Moody’s Analytics databases. He specializes in helping clients build a holistic compliance risk framework to navigate complex regulatory environments.

Choon Hong has over 15 years of experience in the enterprise software solution space, and has spent the last few years advising major financial institutions across Asia Pacific in AML, sanctions, fraud, supplier due diligence, and trade compliance.

Choon Hong is a Certified Anti-Money Laundering Specialist and participates actively in leading financial crime conferences.

Chung Ho is a Vice President, Solution Engineering at TigerGraph covering Asia Pacific and Japan. Chung is a long time evangelist of big data and data analytics solutions. He’s been in the data industry for over 20 years with experiences in deploying large scale data solutions in telecommunication and financial services industry. He currently leads the technology practice of TigerGraph APAC supporting customers in the region in their journey of connected data, machine learning and artificial intelligence analytics. Previously, Chung held senior leadership roles at OmniSci, Snow Software, Kinetica, Cloudera, Cisco and Splunk.

Chung holds a Master of Business Administration from University of California.

Mr. Dante Fuentes is a Certified Public Accountant, Certified Fraud Examiner, and Certified Anti-Money Laundering Specialist with over 40 years banking experience and consultant of 3 banks and 1 fintech company.

Dante is an Accredited Trainer on Anti-Money Laundering Act (AMLA) and Terrorist Financing Prevention and Suppression Act (TFPSA) and other issuances of the Anti-Money Laundering Council holding a Certificate of Accreditation CRN AT-0007 and has lectured and acted as resource person in the countries of Bhutan, Malaysia, Myanmar, Singapore, and Thailand.

He is the president of the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners – Philippine Chapter since 2014 and a Senior Adviser of the Good Governance Advocates and Practitioners of the Philippines since 2013. Dante served as president of the Association of Bank Compliance Officers, Inc. (ABCOMP) from 2006 to 2018. He currently serves as one of the advisers to the Board of ABCOMP.

Dante is a member of the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners (ACFE) based in Houston, Texas, USA; Association of Certified Anti-Money Laundering Specialists (ACAMS) based in Miami, Florida, USA; and Society of Corporate Compliance and Ethics (SCCE) based in Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA.

Dibyajyoti is currently the Global Head of Fraud Risk – Consumer, Private & Business Banking and Governance at Standard Chartered Bank Singapore. He is an experienced Fraud Risk Management professional with experiences in various financial institutions across APAC. Prior joining Standard Chartered, he was Country Fraud Risk Manager for Citibank Australia and VP & Head – Analytics, Strategy & Policy, Fraud Risk Management in Citibank Singapore. He also held position at ABN AMRO as Head of Authorisation & Fraud Control. 

Douglas is the Head of Discipline for the Financial Crime Studies program at the Australian Graduate School of Policing and Security, Charles Sturt University and a PhD Scholar at the Australian National University. He manages the Masters of Anti-Money Laundering and Counter Terrorism, the Masters of Fraud and Financial Crime programs and a range of professional development Micro subjects of topics including Trade-Based Money Laundering, Financial Crime Intelligence and White-Collar Psychopathy. Douglas comes from a law enforcement background and has served in the New Zealand Police Service, National Services Scotland and the NHS Counter Fraud and Security Management Service in England. Douglas’s research interests focus on criminology, white-collar crime, money laundering, TBML and financial crime. 

Grace Then is the Financial Crime Practice Lead (ASEAN) in Moody’s Analytics. A Certified Anti-Money Laundering Specialist, Grace is active in the professional compliance community across the public sector, banking and corporate space, having presented at various compliance events. Her key topics include AML, fraud and trade compliance

Grace has an adept understanding of the prevalent risk of financial crimes and actively drives compliance related initiatives across Asia Pacific.

In her professional role, she serves as a consultant and provides advisory to existing and prospective customers on critical financial crime compliance and regulatory best practices. Grace’s prior experiences spans from the banking sector to the government sector, where she was a banking supervisor helps in the navigation of complex regulatory environment.

Henry Roxas is Head of Trade Finance at R3, responsible for business development, product and strategy. Over the last five years, Henry has played a key role in developing R3’s ecosystem of over 85 trade and supply chain business networks on Corda, R3’s enterprise blockchain platform. Henry currently chairs the Asia Pacific Financial Forum (APFF) TBML taskforce, a group responsible for researching and putting forth policy recommendations to the APEC Finance Ministers on areas to improve the effectiveness of combating TBML, in collaboration with UNESCAP, BAFT, ICC and others. 

Prior to R3, Henry has over 8 years of transaction banking and wealth management experience from several leading financial institutions, including ANZ and Bank of America Merrill Lynch. 

Holly is currently the APAC Head of Fraud Solutions in Quantexa based in Sydney. Prior joining Quantexa, she has a wide experience in the fraud, forensics, audit and internal controls in various consulting firms. She was previously held the position of Director of Forensics at KPMG, Senior Manager at EY in UK and Senior Consultant at MHM.

She has a degree in BS Mathematics with Finance and and MBA at European School of Management and Technology.

Jia is currently leading the data science team at Grab in Singapore, developing AI technologies in fraud detection, identity verification, user safety, financial risk and personalizing ride hailing experience.

His interests are exploring the frontiers of AI technologies, extracting meaningful insights from data and creating social and business values. His focus is to make systems WORK.

Jia previously worked at Lenovo’s Machine Intelligence Lab, the first and now the largest AI lab in Huawei - Noah’s Ark Lab, and mobile ads team in Baidu. He have also co-founded two AI start-ups, one in generic AI solutions and the other one in computer vision.

He obtained his Ph.D. in Computer Science from HKUST and bachelor in Automatic Control from Tsinghua University.

As a Senior FinCrime Compliance SME with R3, Joseph works on product strategy and innovation, supports senior management and sales executives, and works with customers to realize the opportunities to support their efforts to improve compliance ROI through leveraging R3’s technology and platforms. 

As President of Oxonia, Joseph leads an Advisory and Professional Services firm working with solutions providers and their customers to overcome the emblematic issues in applying technology to solve problems, avoiding waste and maximizing results.  

Prior to launching Oxonia, Joseph served as Global VP of Strategy & Alliances at Accuity, Chief Innovation Officer at Safe Banking Systems and SVP, Head of Global Risk Analytics at HSBC and responsible all FCC solutions deployed in the US. He managed teams engaged in all aspects of model governance in relation to AML analytics, design, development, optimization, model validation and remediation.  

Previously, he held various positions working with and for some of the world’s leading technology solutions providers and spent several years in the U.S. Treasury as Senior Advisor on Economic Crimes, and U.S. Treasury Attaché in liaison to the South American FATF to provide information technology solutions to combat financial crime through technical assistance programs.  

Joseph has over 25 years of experience in the financial industry. More than 15 years have been spent within the Compliance industry, working to mitigate money laundering and other financial crime risks through the use of technology specific to AML/FCC initiatives. He has provided training, technical assistance, and guidance to both public and private sectors in over 40 countries.  

As a subject matter expert, he has spoken at various industry events, notably ACAMS and FATF Plenaries, and has provided expert AML/CFT commentary to a number of international publications. 

In 2020, Joseph launched and chair the New York City Chapter of the Association of Certified Sanctions Specialists (ACSS).  

Joseph is also the co-chair of the New York City Alumni Club for The Johns Hopkins Carey Business School.  

Kamala Wedding leads the Customer Success team for the America’s at Shift Technology where she oversees the close working relationship with customers to provide ongoing support and guidance around business strategy and transformation topics to ensure overall customer satisfaction, and successful product adoption. She has spent her career fighting fraud, managing operations and developing anti–fraud strategy for all lines of business. Prior to joining Shift she spend twenty years at Farmers Insurance most recently as the Director of SIU. 

Lito Villanueva is presently the Executive Vice President and Chief Innovation and Inclusion Officer for Rizal Commercial Banking Corporation (RCBC). Mr. Villanueva is also concurrently Chief Digital Transformation Advisor for the Yuchengco Group of Companies. Under Mr. Villanueva’s leadership, RCBC received five global digital awards during the pandemic and was recognized as the Philippines’ Best Digital Bank. Mr. Villanueva also created and launched DiskarTech – the country’s first and only Taglish inclusion super app with over 3 million app downloads in three months from launch. Mr. Villanueva was formerly with The Economist Intelligence Unit, Visa, Smart Communications, International Finance Corporation, and Voyager Innovations covering PayMaya, and FINTQnologies as its Managing Director.

Mr. Villanueva is the Philippines’ leading and award-​winning thought leader on digital transformation and inclusive digital finance. He has over 20 years of experience in banking, telecommunications, payments, development finance, and financial technology. He is merited with over 50 global and regional awards, including being one of the Top 100 FinTech Leaders in Asia. For his efforts in scaling digital innovations and financial inclusion, he is the first and only Filipino, thus far, to be included in the list. BizNews Asia magazine also named him “Mr. FinTech of the Philippines”.

He is also Founding Chairman of FinTech Alliance.ph and has released various publications including the award-​winning three-​volume Inclusive Digital Finance Report and the Uncharted Beyond: The Taxonomy of FinTech in the Philippines.

Matthew Simon is the APAC Forensic Sales Consultant for Magnet Forensics. Matthew’s role is to support customers of Magnet Forensics across the APAC region in the application of digital forensics, to understand the technical challenges investigators are facing and help ensure the company is providing the most relevant and innovative solutions.

Matthew previously held the role of Digital Crime Officer at the INTERPOL Global Complex for Innovation where he was in the Digital Forensics Laboratory. In this role he worked closely with the INTERPOL member countries to provide incident response, capacity building and training, and digital forensics laboratory support. Prior to his time at INTERPOL, Matthew spent almost five years in criminal law enforcement as an Electronic Evidence Specialist with the Electronic Crime Section of the South Australia Police in Australia. He actively worked with police investigators on many serious criminal matters and provided expert reports and oral expert testimony in court for numerous cases

Matthew has a PhD by research in digital forensics and a Bachelor’s Degree with First Class Honours from the University of South Australia. He is an expert digital forensics practitioner, an academic researcher and is experienced in computer and mobile forensics.

Meena Sankar is currently the lead for IFC’s Anti-Corruption and Integrity risk management in Asia Pacific.

Micky Lo joined BNY Mellon in July 2013 as Chief Technology Risk Officer APAC. He is leading the regional team with the mission to enable business solutions while proactively protecting BNY Mellon from information risks in a balanced control environment. He oversees and govern the implementation of the bank wide information risk roadmap in the region with particular focus on IT regulatory compliance.

He has over 30 years of IT experience in Financial Service Industry that spans across a diversified IT management disciplines including regional and location management, IT and security architecture, distributed computing engineering, technology infrastructure operation, outsourcing/in-sourcing management, IT risk management and technology audit.

Before joining BNY Mellon, Micky was the Head of IT Security APAC and Head of Technology Greater China for Deutsche Bank. Micky has held various management positions in IT management, IT Security/Risk management and Audit with JPMorgan and Citibank.

Micky serves as industry advisor of the Bachelor of Management Science and Information Management Programme of Hang Seng Management College.

Micky received a Bachelor of Mathematic degree from the University of Waterloo (Canada) and an Executive Master of Business Administration degree from University of Western Ontario (Canada). He is also a Certified Information System auditor.

Mohd Azril Fadzli bin Azmi has served in the Royal Malaysian Police (RMP) for 11 years from November 2003 to March 2014. He is a graduate of Universiti Teknologi Mara (UiTM) majoring in Finance. He pursued his post-graduate studies at the Monash University, Victoria, Australia majoring in Banking & Finance sponsored by the Malaysian Government under the ‘Hadiah Latihan Persekutuan’ – HLP scholarship in July 2009 and graduated in December 2010.

During his career with RMP, he has served 2(two) departments namely Crime Investigation Department (CID) and Commercial Crime Investigation Department (CCID).  He has solved major public interest cases and attended courses organised locally and by international police namely the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. He was conferred with the ‘Pingat Kedaulatan Negara’ – PKN in 16 August 2017 as a form of recognition for his service whilst with RMP. On professional accreditation, he is a Certified Fraud Examiner (CFE), Certified Investigation Specialist (CIS), Certified Integrity Officer (CeiO) and Certified ISO 37001 Provisional Auditor.

At present, he assumed the role of Head Fraud Management Division a newly established function of Bank Kerjasama Rakyat Malaysia Berhad. He is a man of a pleasant character and of high integrity, well versed in financial crime investigation and had demonstrated a history of professional working experience in both public and corporate sector.

Nicholas joined Polonious after deploying and working on Polonious Case Management Systems while part of the Student Discipline and Compliance team at Curtin University. After some time working on the system, and after finding he enjoyed working on Polonious more than he enjoyed committees and paperwork, he was recruited by Polonious to work for them full time. 
 
Nicholas’ role revolves primarily around business analysis, project management and customer relations, backed up with some necessary technical skills. However, he is a philosophy graduate, not a developer – in his words, the developers make the building blocks, he draws the plan and puts them together. Using his degree he is primarily a ‘translator’ – translating between customer requirements and Polonious capabilities, as well as between customers who aren’t always tech savvy, and developers who don’t always speak ‘human’. A bit of formal logic helps there, and a keen interest in ‘Why?’ as much as ‘What?’ helps Nicholas to deliver process improvements with each roll-out. 
 
Nicholas has worked with clients across the board from banks, insurers, and investigation firms, to education and child protection. 

Nirmal has been with the Life Insurance sector since 2005. Presently he is designated as VP and Head – Fraud Prevention Unit & Claims Investigation at Bajaj Allianz Life Insurance Company Ltd managing all pillars of Anti Fraud Strategy.

Seasoned professional with rich 21 years of experience in 5 Industries namely Cards, Banking, Publishing, Forex and Life Insurance in the field of Financial Crime, Building and institutionalizing Culture of Ethics and Compliance, Forensics Investigation, Fraud Risk assessments, Data Analytics, Code of Conduct, Whistle Blowing Process, Prevention of Sexual Harassment, Compliance Audits.

Prior to his present assignment, Nirmal was with Max Life Insurance Company Ltd as VP and Head – Compliance Reviews and Investigations. He also worked with American Express TRS, Thomas Cook and Oxford University Press. He has been honoured with Best Compliance Team’ 2016 in Compliance 10/10 Awards, ‘Best Fraud Analytics Team of the Year’, ‘Best Fraud Intelligence’ award at 5th Annual Insurance India Summit & Awards 2020. Further, Holds reputation on hosting two Insurance Industry Meets and a Speaker on various Industry Forums.

Nirmal Paul has a double Masters degree with M.Phil in Zoology and M.B.A. in Marketing. He is also a certified Anti-Corruption Manager from The American Anti-Corruption Institute (AACI).

Sam is currently the Head of Global Information Security for Fidelity International. Based in Hong Kong since 2011, Sam oversees information security, technology risk, cyber security and cyber defense operations. 

Sam has over 10 years of experience in the security and technology field. Prior to his current role, Sam was the Information Security, Senior Manager for Asia Pacific where his role focused on governance, risk and compliance as well as supporting operational security across the region. Previous to that, Sam was part of Fidelity International’s Corporate Security function where he was involved in internal investigations, background vetting and due diligence activities associated with security assurance. 

Sam started his career in Sydney Australia in 2003 and held a number of system support and administration roles before joining Fidelity International in 2005. 

Sam holds a Bachelor of Technology degree from The University of Western Sydney. He is also CISSP and CISA certified. 

Sarah has been the Manager of Financial Crime Investigations at Suncorp for the past 3 years. Sarah brings extensive experience in the finance, education and disability services industries to the role, managing a frontline team that protects Suncorp customers from fraud and scams.

Sheetal Bhardwaj is a seasoned Risk & Compliance professional with over 19 years of hands-on experience managing successful Compliance Programs in the MENAT region. She is presently working with one of the largest banks in the New Zealand.  

She was an approved Compliance Officer & MLRO by the Central Bank of the UAE and Dubai Financial Services Authority (DFSA). As a Subject-Matter Expert, she has served in leadership roles covering various aspects of Regulatory Compliance & Financial Crime Risk, including regulatory audits & thematic reviews. She is an Executive Board Member and Communication Director of ACFCS (Association of Certified Financial Crime Specialists, US), MENA Chapter. 

She is an MBA in Finance & a mathematical science graduate in statistics from the University of Delhi. She is a Certified Anti Money Laundering Specialist (CAMS), Certified Global Sanctions Specialist (CGSS), Certified Fraud Examiner (CFE), Certified Compliance Officer (CCO), along with certifications in Compliance & AML from CISI, UK & ICA Manchester Business School, Henley Business School. 

Sheetal is a well-known speaker and has delivered several speaking & training assignments in various forums, including at the University of Bradford and the University of Dubai. 

 She has also volunteered in the Government of India initiative, “Mentor of Change,” to educate children in rural areas of India. 

Simon has over 22 years of Industry Experience. He is an expert in Cyber Security & Cyber Crime Investigations and is a member of the High Technology Crime Investigation Association. He is a Certified Fraud Examiner (CFE), IAM/RFID expert, insider fraud, biometrics, ISO 27001 Lead Auditor, Expert Witness and a first responder to major cyber crisis events. 
 
He has been engaged and appeared as an expert witness in numerous criminal and civil cases to analyse forensic digital evidence from VCAT level up to the High Court; some involving murder, CEM (child exploitation material), drug charges, catfishing, cyber stalking, and other alleged criminal activity where Simon has analysed evidence and given opinion on how well the procedure in the collection of digital evidence was followed by police. 
 
He is also a Social Media Expert, and is experienced and holds certifications in Ethical Hacking, Information Technology Professional, Penetration Testing, Splunk, Palo Alto, CyberArk, IBM B/C, Win32 API, C SQL, Java, Checkpoint Security Master (CCSM), and Google Analytics (GAIQ). He is a full SDLC Enterprise software and systems developer, and developer of business software since 1999.

Steve Gemperle was a Senior Special Agent with the United States Secret Service who specializes in cyber-crime. Steve joined the US Secret Service in 1999 and served with the US Secret Service until retiring in 2021. For the last decade of his career with the Secret Service he focused on computer crimes and served as Lab Director for the US Secret Service Southwest Regional Computer Forensic Lab. Steve has completed over 1900 forensic exams and 150 network intrusion investigations while working for the Secret Service. He has been qualified as an expert witness on Digital Forensics in both state and Federal courts. Steve also provided cyber protection advances for the President and Vice President when they travel.

Steve has been recognized as one of the US Secret Service’s top network intrusion investigators. He has also repeatedly been named one of the top forensic investigators in the US Secret Service. He has taught computer crime and network intrusion investigations both domestically and internationally.

Steve has held a number of other positions within the US Secret Service. He was assigned to the Presidential Protection Division for President George W. Bush and was an Instructor at the US Secret Service training academy where he served as the Lead Instructor for the Combatives and Tactics unit.

Concurrently with his role with the US Secret Service, Steve was the US Secret Service liaison to the University of Texas at San Antonio’s National Security Collaboration Center and one of its founding members. In this role he works closely with other faculty in the IOT research lab and in research regarding video systems. Steve led a team consisting of personnel from the National Security Agency and the Army Research Lab in the development of a software suite for Memory Forensics.

In 2021, Steve joined Magnet Forensics as a Forensic Consultant.

Raymon Ram is an advocate against economic crime, having published numerous articles and case analyses on the subject matter. He is a Certified Fraud Examiner (CFE), Certified Anti-Money Laundering Specialist (CAMS) with a Master’s degree in Economic Crime Management, Bachelor’s degree in Psychology (HONS) and Certificate in Corporate Governance by Basel Institute, Switzerland.

He has led teams to complete corporate fraud investigations, asset recovery exercises and facilitated various anti-fraud courses for the local law enforcement agencies and private sector entities, mainly those listed on Bursa Malaysia and regulated by the Securities Commission. He had also assisted the National Audit Department, Malaysia to restructure the Audit Investigation Guidelines for state and national level auditors.

Raymon is the Founder / Managing Principal at Graymatter Forensic Advisory Sdn Bhd, a solution-based training and advisory specializing in Financial Forensics and Fraud Risk Management. He also holds the position of Secretary General at Transparency International Malaysia and Assist. Secretary General at the Malaysian Association of Certified Fraud Examiners.

Tom Wesselman is the CTO and head of product at TeleSign. Prior to TeleSign, he was VP/GM of the software business unit at Plantronics (now Poly) from 2018 to 2021, after joining the company in 2013 as Director of Software. He spent 11 years at Cisco leading teams in security, identity, unified communications, and the strategic alliance with Microsoft. Wesselman specializes in building and accelerating new businesses, developing high-performance teams, and using lean and agile development to deliver both innovation and growth.