Singapore 2024

Bharath is a partner with McKinsey’s Singapore office, where he leads the firm’s work with payments in Asia, and is part of the banking, sustainability, and digital leadership teams. Over the past 15 years, Bharath has served a broad range of global, regional, and local institutions across banking, payments, fintech, wealth management, technology, and private equity on multiple cross-functional topics related to corporate strategy and M&A, sustainability, innovation, growth, and transformation. He has experience in building and scaling new ventures and has extensively worked across several markets in Asia, including most markets in Southeast Asia, Australia, India, and Greater China.
Prior to joining McKinsey, Bharath held leadership roles at two other global management consulting firms where he focused on financial services and digital banking across Asia–Pacific.

Chee Kin is accountable for the team which manages the legal and regulatory risk of DBS across legal entities, segments and geographies. Prior to joining, he held various legal and compliance portfolios in Standard Chartered Bank, JPMorgan, Rajah & Tann and Allen & Gledhill, including a stint as Chief Operating Officer, South East Asia for JPMorgan. A lawyer by profession, he has particular expertise in financial services regulation, and financial markets product and business structuring. Currently, however, he is focusing on the impact of digitisation, and the evolution of frameworks that will be necessary to cope with digitisation and data, together with second-order issues such as how criminal activity will also evolve, and how legal and compliance departments can benefit from analytics and AI.

Flora Shi is an Implementation Director at Wise Platform. Dedicated to delivering seamless integrations and providing the best experiences for partners and their customers, Flora has helped multiple organisations, such as Mox Bank and Qonto, launch a faster and more transparent international money movement service. Prior to Wise, Flora spent over six years at Visa, where she led complex client engagements for new payment solutions and drove the digital currency arm of the Visa APAC Innovation Center.

Jayant leads the development of Mox’s product strategy and propositions. As the Chief Product Officer, he is responsible for driving the P&L and Balance Sheet growth, creating a strong alignment with the bank’s product roadmap and improving customer and business value. Jayant has over 20 years of experience in banking. Prior to joining Mox, he was part of the Standard Chartered Group and has vast experience in running businesses across Unsecured Lending, Credit Cards, SME Banking and Deposits. In his last role, he was the Global Head of Deposits, Mortgages, and Payments wherein he created and executed the bank’s Global Payments Strategy with the bank making huge strides in the payments space. He was instrumental in launching the bank’s domestic real-time P2P capabilities across geographies, enhanced digital international money transfers, and created new merchant payment options across wallets, contactless, and QR payments. As a firm believer in partnerships, Jayant successfully led global partnerships on digital and emerging payments with Visa, Mastercard, Apple, and Google previously. As the Global Deposits Head, he also used behavioural science to build products and create a digital multi-currency proposition for international and wealth clients. Jayant has completed his MBA in Marketing Management from Jamnalal Bajaj Institute of Management Studies – The University of Mumbai, amongst the top B-schools in India. Outside work, Jayant loves hiking and cycling. He is a childhood supporter of Liverpool FC and follows premier league football closely.

Jibran is Head of Fintech & Business Initiatives at Agoda. Based in Asia, he spearheads the business and partnership side of Agoda’s global payment and fintech initiatives. He has over 14 years of experience in fintech, banking, risk management and business development, having spent the initial part of his career in banking, before moving to travel and tech.

Leonardo Kurniawan leads the APAC Payment Rail Product Management team for J.P. Morgan Payments. His product responsibilities encompass Core Payment Rails, Emerging Payment Rails, Payments Platforms and eCommerce Solutions, covering all 14 markets where J.P. Morgan operates in the region. Leo joined J.P. Morgan in 2014, prior to which he spent seven years in the transaction banking industry with other large global banks. With 15 years of product experience working in multiple APAC markets, Leo comes with diverse knowledge spanning product execution, delivery and collaboration with clients from different industries across the region.

Samarth Bansal is the General Manager, Asia Pacific at Wise Platform, Wise’s global payments infrastructure for banks, financial institutions and enterprises around the world. He leads the Wise Platform team in APAC, and is responsible for driving the growth of Wise’s infrastructure offering to banks and enterprises in the region, including the partnerships with Mox Bank, Bank Mandiri and ZA Bank. Prior to joining Wise, Samarth has held leadership positions at other fintechs in the B2B cross-border payments space across product, expansion and business development.

Ser-Jin leads the Wise Compliance team in the Asia-Pacific region, covering regulatory advisory, financial crime and monitoring. He also serves as the Executive Director for Wise’s licensed entities in Japan, Hong Kong and Indonesia. Ser-Jin has held senior management positions at Nium and Grab, where he was the Group Head of Compliance. He started his career at the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) where he worked in banking supervision, monetary management, and prudential policy. He was also the Head of the MAS’ New York Representative Office. Ser-Jin has degrees from the London School of Economics and the University of Chicago.

SK Saraogi is the Head of Banking and Expansion, APAC, at Wise, leading a team spread across 10 countries. Based in Singapore, he is responsible for expanding and improving Wise’s regional product offerings and managing Wise’s relationships with regulators, governments, payment systems, and banking partners across the region. SK is also the Singapore Country Manager, providing leadership to local teams and functional leads to ensure smooth operations in Wise’s APAC Hub.

Prior to Wise, SK was the Head of Strategy at Funding Societies, a Singapore-based fintech which provides financial services to SMEs across SEA. SK started his career at DBS Bank, where he gained extensive experience in Corporate and Investment Banking. SK has an MBA from Duke University in the USA and an undergraduate degree in Economics and Finance from Singapore Management University in Singapore. He has also completed all levels of the CFA Program.

Sonia-Carla Ciocirlie is the Head of Business Operations at Wise Platform, Wise’s market-leading global payment infrastructure for banks, financial institutions and enterprises around the world. She leads the Servicing teams providing enterprise-level support to Wise Platform partners, ensuring scalability, whilst reducing costs and improving SLAs. The Servicing teams include Compliance Operations, such as KYC and KYB, Risk Assessment and Monitoring, Enterprise Support, Customer Success, FinCrime Operations and Payment Operations. Since joining Wise in 2016, Sonia has held various positions including in Marketing and Sales. 

Smrithi Ravi is the Engineering Lead for APAC at Wise. She leads teams of highly skilled engineers that focus on building scalable and resilient products for Wise in the region. Smrithi’s expertise involves building technical solutions by working closely with central banks and partners ensuring high technical standards and resilient, seamless customer experience. Prior to Wise, she started her journey in fintech at Bloomberg in New York after obtaining her Master’s degree from Columbia University. She then worked in Groupon in California.

Steve Naudé is the Managing Director of Wise Platform, Wise’s market-leading global payment infrastructure for banks, financial institutions and enterprises around the world. Wise Platform provides these organisations with the capabilities, technology and network to enable fast, secure and cost-effective international payments for their customers. Previously, Steve has worked on payments international expansion, as well as direct connections to payment schemes such as UK Faster Payments and Swift.