B2B Converge: Asia-Pacific

Albert Taras is responsible for TCG’s global corporate planning, management, and direction as well as the lead executive sponsor for key client partnerships and engagements. He has over 30 years of international travel industry experience and has led over 300 engagements in TCG’s 24-year history to optimize and integrate organization’s global Travel, Meetings, Payment & Expense Management programs.

Under Albert’s leadership, TCG was recently named to Consulting Magazine’s Fastest Growing Global Consulting Firms list for both 2016 and 2017 as well as ranking in the top 40% of the Inc. 5000 Fastest Growing Firms list in 2017.

Albert’s specific leadership experience includes strategy development, category sourcing, operations and service delivery, policy development and compliance, workflows and processes, integration of corporate payments and expense management systems, scalability, M&A, post-merger integration, benchmarking, reporting and data management, security and traveler tracking, compliance management to supplier agreements, program & project implementations, and management. Albert led the internal team in creating and launching TCG’s proprietary Total Cost of Ownership for Travel Meetings Payment & Expense SM Program Management Model and approach.

Albert launched TCG Consulting in 1994. The company has been under continuous independent ownership since its founding and has delivered over 1300 global engagements across 163 countries on 6 continents.

Albert is a recognized industry leader and subject matter expert, having presented at industry events including the Association of Corporate Travel Executives, CFO Rising, The European Business Travel Show, ProcureCon, Marcus Evans CPO & CFO Summits, ITM, The Procurement and Supply Institute of Asia, the Global Business Travel Association, and the North Carolina Business Travel Association.

Amit Sharma is the Head of Southeast Asia Treasury Products, Cross Currency Product and Commercial Cards for Bank of America Merrill Lynch (BofAML). He has more than 20 years of experience in the banking and technology industries. His area of focus has been on providing innovative treasury solutions on payables, receivables, integration and centralization. Prior to his current role, Amit has done various roles ranging from being an escrow product manager, regional solutions manager and most recently as the head of eCommerce and Channels for Asia Pacific. Amit holds a Bachelor of Commerce degree from Delhi University, India. He is a certified PRINCE2 practitioner as well.

Celine Chua was appointed VP/GM Global Corporate Payments Singapore on 15 Aug 2017.

Celine has a strong background and 20 years experience in asset-based lending and vendor finance. She joins Amex from DLL Financial Solutions, a wholly owned subsidiary of Rabobank as the Country Manager for Singapore & Hong Kong with responsibilities in sales, risk management, finance & operations. She was with DLL since Jan 2006 when DLL was starting out in Asia. She built the team and Singapore portfolio from scratch and achieved sustainable growth and consistent financial targets from her roles as Senior Sales Manager, Sales Leader and Country Manager. Prior to DLL, Celine was VP Sales, Vendor Financial Services at GE Capital through the Heller Financial acquisition in 2002. She also worked at Orix Leasing, a Japanese Leasing company, earlier in her career.

Chrystie is an experienced international Financial Services Executive with over 20 years of experience across various business disciplines. Her experience spans across multiple continents including Europe and Asia Pacific, specialising in global business development in treasury and payments across both financial institutions and corporate client segments. Chrystie co-founded iPaymy in 2015 and, and before her current role, she was responsible for the delivery and execution of the company’s Strategy and Vision, including building the best possible customer experience and optimising service delivery for the benefit of our Partners and Customers.

Darren has over 20 years industry experience across the UK and APAC. He spent 5 years at ANZ Bank specialising in commercial payments and leading ANZ’s commercial card and merchant acquiring sales teams across Australia. Darren joined Conferma from MasterCard where he was responsible for the management of key customer relationships with MasterCard commercial card issuers and related partners as well as supporting corporate customers directly. Darren has responsibility for the APAC Region. Based in Singapore, his time is spent managing Conferma’s existing relationships, while actively increasing our footprint in the Region.

Based in Singapore, Deborah Moss is responsible for Travel & Entertainment products across Asia Pacific within Citi Global Commercial Cards. Before joining the Asia team in 2017, Deborah spent six years at Citi headquarters in New York City in various roles across the Commercial Cards and broader Transaction Services franchise. Most recently, Deborah was responsible for driving Global Consistency and Client Experience across Citi’s Commercial Cards footprint of 100+ markets globally. Deborah holds a degree in Finance, Marketing, and Psychology from the University of Miami

Desmond is committed to developing Conferma`s growing virtual card issuing ecosystem in APAC.

With over 20 years` experience in business travel, he has held senior positions with American Express Global Business Travel and Abacus International, delivering top-line and margin growth by strengthening global TMC and GDS relationships regionally, developing new solutions and ventures and driving product adoption across APAC.

As VP for Sales and Distribution in Global Payments Asia-Pacific (GPAP), Donald is responsible for the business performance of both Singapore and the Malaysia. His scope of work in GPAP also includes the engagement of partner channels through the 9 of the 12 countries in coverage under GPAP.

Donald’s recent added responsibility is the business development of commercial payments acceptance solution on the card schemes network for GPAP unified backend connectivity. Scope of coverage includes supplier enablement by leveraging on straight-through processing and partnership with B2B processors in the region.

Prior to GPAP, Donald has been in the payments acceptance technology segment over 20 years since 1998 through various capacity of card payment solution sales in Verifone, American Express, Gilbarco and fintech companies during the early millennial years in the online payment industry such as VCHEQ and WildCard Systems.

Dr. Ken Baylor is recognized as a leader in Data Protection, Privacy, Information Security and Regulatory Compliance. He advises multiple companies on cybersecurity. Ken is a business-focused CISO, and served in that role for multiple organizations. His recent speaking engagements include RSA, Blackhat, and FS-ISAC. Dr. Baylor is a Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP) and a Certified Information Systems Manager (CISM). His was formally trained both as a scientist and lawyer. He is a certified Data Protection Officer (IAPP CIPP-E and CIPM).

Jake is the CEO and co-founder of Rate – a family of products that include a browser extension RateX, the mobile app RateS and their payment network Rate3.

Prior to co-founding Rate, Jake was also involved in venture capital and led growth in other startups.

Given Jake’s strong interest in technology and entrepreneurship, he also serves as an Advisor for both Odyssey Foundation (oBike’s crypto-currency) and DATx, a blockchain-empowered digital advertising terminal. Jake is also a Graduating Fellow at eFellows, an Alibaba Global Initiative. Likewise, he is a strong advocate of Singapore’s startup scene, having given various addresses in startup events, with the latest being UniCON 2018.

Jake obtained his undergraduate degree in both Economics and Technopreneurship from National University of Singapore.

James (Jim) has over spent over 18 years working in the Asia Pacific region with 14 years experience in many areas of the payment solutions and corporate travel industry. In his role at Diners Club International, Jim is responsible for Commercial Payment Solutions region-wide, including Commercial Cards, SME payment products as well as pre paid and travel cards. Jim joined Diners Club International from the global travel management company HRG where he held the position of APAC Sales Director. Prior to that, he ran his own consulting business specialising in training, coaching and business advice as well as senior regional posts at American Express and Regus Business Centres. He is an active member of ACTE and a member of the Advisory Board for GBTA in Hong Kong and China He is married with one daughter and in his spare time is passionate about music and the arts within his home territory of Hong Kong. Most significantly, being a Director of Witness Productions and the driving forces behind ‘Picnic in the Park’ an annual music and dance festival attended by thousands? and held for the benefit of two local children?s charities.

James Berti is the CEO – Asia Pacific of the iSphere Global Company, a IT supplier based in Melbourne Australia with offices in Singapore, Indonesia and the Philippines. James is a graduate of the RMIT, where he received a BA in Computer Science.

After graduation, James launched his career in Melbourne where he joined the Myer Group in application development and systems programming. He then joined Australian Card Services (ACS) as the IT engineering head. Citibank purchased ACS a few years later to launch credit cards in Australia and James played an integral part of the launch. Shortly after the Melbourne operation moved to Sydney and then onto Singapore where James lead the transition and then took up an IT leadership role in the Operation and Technology regional office. Shortly after Citi launch a global transformation program to see every country outside the USA move to the international Retail bank platform which in many situations includes enabling the digital age in many franchises. James played an integral part of this transformation which took approximately 7 years to achieve. In 2005 James moved back to Australia to head up Operations and Technology for Citibank Australia.

In 2010, James joined iSphere Global, accountable for the Asia Pacific business operation including the companies hub in Makati, Philippines. iSphere Global, apart from providing IT services, resourcing and product development assist clients in understanding digital technology and the value proposition to customer experience they bring.

James Holt is responsible for HSBC’s strategy and execution of its Corporate and SME Business Card portfolio across Asia Pacific. JAMES has 14 years’ experience developing and commercializing Commercial Card programs first with Citibank in Australia and later at Bank of America Merrill Lynch across the Asia Pacific markets. He led one of the first implementations of Virtual Card and one of the first to deploy digital cloud based processing in commercial card payments in Asia Pacific. Asia is a priority market for HSBC as governments move quickly to displace cash and digitise. The change has been enabled by a new era of technological innovation, which is rapidly changing the way payments are made. Traditional banking models are being challenged and banks need to move quickly to develop and implement their own digital payment strategies. James leads a product team that develops and commercialises the next generation of digital solutions for HSBC. He has a passion for new technology and draws on his experience to meet the challenge of blending old with the new transforming the customer experience.

JOHN CASANOVA is a partner and resident in the firm’s London office. Prior to that, he practiced in the firm’s Singapore office from 2012 to 2016 and in the firm’s Washington, D.C. office from 1996 to 1999. He co-heads the firm’s EU Financial Services Regulatory group. He advises clients on a wide variety of U.S., English and EU financial services regulatory and transactional matters. He also advises on data protection and privacy matters. John works regularly with banks, investment managers, brokers/dealers, payment service providers, payment systems and other financial intermediaries in Asia, the UK, Europe and the United States. He has assisted clients with setting up and operating regulated businesses and financial services joint ventures in the UK, the EU and in Asia. He also works with clients in responding to regulatory investigations and examinations. He has handled commercial transactions for regulated entities and acquisitions and disposals of regulated businesses and asset portfolios. He is an editor of E-Finance and Payments Law and Policy. He has been a contributor to the Review of Banking and Financial Services and the Journal of International Banking Law. He is a contributing editor to Butterworths Financial Regulation Service for Payment Systems and Electronic Money. John is an English-qualified solicitor and a member of the District of Columbia bar in the U.S.

Josephine Law is counsel in the Investment Funds practice in Sidley’s Singapore office. She focuses her practice in both registered fund transactions and financial regulatory advice. Josephine has significant experience in establishing domestic funds, listing exchange traded funds on the Singapore Exchange, registering both domestic and offshore funds for retail distribution and registering funds for restricted offers to accredited investors. Josephine also regularly advises on the establishment and licensing of fund management clients, as well as handling license applications with the Monetary Authority of Singapore. She also has experience in advising both offshore and onshore financial institutions including fund management companies, trustees, banks, broker-dealers and financial advisers on Singapore licensing and regulatory compliance issues, such as advising on licensing requirements and exemptions, regulatory approvals for restructuring and change in control, cross-border marketing of regulated services and products and offering safe harbour exemptions, advertising rules, outsourcing requirements, derivatives reporting issues, anti-money laundering and disclosure of interests in listed securities. Josephine has been recognized as a leading individual in Chambers Asia Pacific for Investment Funds (Singapore) from 2008 to 2013.

In early 2015, Kurt was appointed CEO of Troovo, a newly launched technology company focused on virtualising and completely removing manual intervention within transaction-based industries. Based out of Australia, Troovo is working with companies around the world to help streamline transactional processing, optimise travel and payment operations and integrate multiple data streams for maximum business productivity. Kurt is also currently Chairperson of the ACTE Centre, Association of Corporate Travel Executives. In this role, Kurt leads the Centre’s efforts in research, advocacy and community engagement for the Association and also serves on the Global Board of Directors. Prior to his Chairperson’s tenure, from 2014-2017 Kurt served as Global President of ACTE. ACTE is the leading industry body for advocacy, research and education for the global corporate travel industry. Prior to Troovo, Kurt was with global mining giant Rio Tinto as the Global Category Leader for Travel and Expense Management. In this role based in Singapore, Kurt led Rio Tinto’s global Travel and Expense strategy with key suppliers focusing on improving the total Rio Tinto travel experience. He had global responsibility for travel management, strategic airline, hotel and car sourcing strategies, and driving best practice in corporate card and expense management processes and systems. Before joining Rio Tinto, Kurt was Principal of intelligent.travel consulting, a consultancy devoted to assisting corporations, technology companies, travel suppliers and agents, and travel management companies get the most out of their technology and product solutions, supplier engagements, social media and marketing plans, and strategic development efforts. Before his consultancy, Kurt was Vice President and Head of Advisory Services, Field Effectiveness, Marketing and Product Management, Asia Pacific, at American Express Business Travel in Sydney. In that role, Kurt drove a regionally-focused approach to these four core disciplines, to deliver optimum customer value and revenue growth to the business. Prior to joining American Express, Kurt held roles at Travelport Corporate Travel Solutions as Senior Director, International Markets, responsible for strategic development, marketing, partnership activity and relationship management, based out of the UK. Prior to that he was Director of Product Management and Marketing, Asia Pacific for Travelport splitting his time between Sydney and Hong Kong. Kurt began his corporate travel industry career at Rosenbluth International in Philadelphia, USA, in product management, marketing and strategy roles, culminating in his appointment as Director, Global Marketing – Strategic Travel Services. Kurt holds a Bachelor of Science Degree from Indiana University, USA. Kurt is based in Sydney, Australia and is a dual citizen of the USA and Australia.

Matt has over 12 years’ experience in the payments industry having worked for both banks and schemes. He has recently joined Visa as Senior Director, SME Growth & Execution, prior to this he was working at Mastercard in Singapore as Head of Commercial Solutions for South East Asia. Before to relocating to Singapore Matt worked for ANZ in Melbourne in a number of roles focusing on commercial payables & receivables and Small Business sales leadership.

Mohit is the regional lead for the strategy practice across all industries. He has been working with Deloitte Consulting for almost 10+ years. He has worked in North America, Western Europe and various parts of Asia including Singapore, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Vietnam, Malaysia, Thailand, Philippines, Taiwan, China, Korea and Japan. He has delivered advisory services to various Governments, Telcos, Real estate businesses, Financial institutions in the region. Mohit has managed regional engagements to address strategy, value proposition development, segmentation, distribution and profitability related issues. He has written numerous articles in publications such as Financial Times, Straits Times, Asia Insurance Review, Business Times, GT News, Asian Banking & Finance to name a few.

As Head of Product Strategy & Innovation for Fraedom, Nick Campbell is responsible for driving the strategic direction of the Fraedom platform, with a focus on new technologies and product development. For nearly four years Nick has been working closely with Fraedom’s banking partners to ensure Fraedom continues to make significant investment in its Expense and Payment products allowing banks to provide more consumer-centric offerings to the global market. With 12 years’ experience in the Fintech industry Nick has worked on and led projects across b2b lending, financial auditing, accountancy, and payments.

Nicki has more than 25 years behind him in the commercial cards industry, working across a wide variety of disciplines and business areas from brand building and marketing through product management to processing across all segments and product categories in the commercial cards market. Focusing on strategy development, product development, business planning, technical and commercial feasibility studies, program implementation and staff support and training, Nicki has been engaged in numerous projects for card issuers and acquirers, payment schemes, oil companies etc. globally.

Past Companies – Taipan Partners, Masan Group and Avigo Capital Partners Nikhilesh brings over 10 years of Private Equity and Corporate Finance experience across ASEAN and India.

His experience includes M&A transactions across diverse sectors along with portfolio management and value creation at investee companies.
He has also worked on fund raising transactions successfully raising capital from Private Equity funds, Institutional Investors and DevelopmentFinance Institutions.

His key skills include end-to-end deal execution, portfolio management, growth strategy and operational improvement.

Peter is based in Singapore and serves as the Regional Head for SAP Concur’s Financial Services’ Channel in Asia – Pacific. Contributing extensive public and private sector expertise to the business, Peter is responsible for accelerating mutual revenue growth and joint innovation with SAP Concur’s Financial Services’ partners. Over the past five years, he has worked alongside some of the world’s preeminent financial institutions to market, sell and service SAP Concur’s products to their customers. A passionate innovator, Peter has a proven track record building out the partner – lead go to market for technology organisations. Prior to joining Concur, he worked for Cisco Systems, a global leader in networking, cloud and collaboration technology, working with partners in Australia and the South Pacific Peter graduated with a Bachelor of Economics and Finance from Canterbury University, New Zealand. He was recently chosen to represent SAP for their Social Sabbatical program in Brazil, during July 2017, helping the Government to develop new ways of fostering economic growth through entrepreneurship.

Philip is the Regional Head of Commercial Solutions for UOB Group. He joined UOB in 2014, and is currently based in Singapore. Philip oversees all commercial card payments for Southeast Asia and Hong Kong, and leads a team to offer a wide range of payment solutions to help enterprises streamline business processes, manage expenses, reduce operating costs and improve overall efficiency. Philip has more than 23 years of experience in the payments industry and has worked across several disciplines, including product development and management, project management, business process re-engineering and payment solutions for consumers and corporations. Prior to joining UOB, Philip worked with American Express and Visa where he led regional teams serving commercial card and corporate travel industries across Asia Pacific.

Sid’s working life has been spent breaking and rebuilding things. Frustrated at the usual approach to doing business, he has developed organisations which specialise in innovation. The consistent theme in each company has been ‘there’s a better way to do this.’ He is the Founder of Invapay – a technology company which simplifies payments and procurement for buyers and sellers. Invapay saves money and is widely used in multi-nationals and SMEs. Before Invapay Sid founded HMSL in 1975 which he sold in 2005. HMSL delivered accounts payable automation and processing to major international corporations (the customers include Sun Microsystems, 3M &Gillette). Sid loves to talk openly and honestly about archaic business practice, what all companies can do to make life simpler and how to operate more efficiently.

Siddharth Pande heads Commercial Payments Sales & Business Development for the T&E vertical for Asia Pacific for Mastercard. He’s based out of Singapore. Before Mastercard Siddharth was engaged in setting up Commercial Payments business for large Issuing Banks in India. He has over 17 years of experience in the payments space across multiple geographies including South Asia and South East Asia.

Stefanie Koh leads the Enterprise platforms and solutions for Business Solutions across Asia Pacific based in Singapore. Stefanie joined Visa in 2010, with extensive commercial payments experience from JPMorgan, Citibank and American Express in Singapore and the UK.

Victor has more than 14 years experience in corporate travel payment across Europe and APAC. He set up payment solution for AirPlus International in some Easter European markets as well as APAC with focus on China when he started as business development manager 14 years ago. Afterwards, he headed the bank partnership initiative to sign up 6 partners which covers 12 markets in APAC. After the successful setup of bank partner network, he was then appointed as Head of Marketing APAC to lead the further expansion in terms of product and marketing in more APAC countries, including Japan, New Zealand and launch of virtual card in Australia and Hong Kong. Currently, he is responsible for the Corporate Strategy and M&A in APAC.

Vikram Kshettry is responsible for the development and management of Visa Inc.’s products and services for small business entities in Asia Pacific. Mr. Kshettry joined Visa in its Asia Pacific regional office in Singapore in 2008 and was responsible for Visa Commercial products for governments, corporations and small businesses in the South East Asia and India markets. Before joining Visa, Mr. Kshettry worked with ABN AMRO Bank in Hong Kong and India in the areas of corporate and investment banking. Between 2004 and 2008, he was responsible for Coverage for Multinational Clients in Asia Pacific. He is a certified Chartered Accountant and a member of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India. He has a Bachelors in Commerce degree from the University of Kolkata, India.