How the PSR Panel works

Robert Caplehorn is a highly experienced NED who has worked for several UK and European based regulated fintech companies. Since the mid-1990s, he has focused on digital payments working with FinTechs developing innovative, new digital payment services, including many years working for PayPal, securing their regulated status in Europe, originally as an EMI in the UK and, later, as a bank based in Luxembourg before relocating to Silicon Valley.  He previously worked for NatWest supporting the payments, electronic banking, and payment cards sectors. He is a lawyer who has worked in the UK, Luxembourg, and USA in industry, government, payments, and banking.

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. 

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 a strategic payment professional with extensive knowledge in all aspects of the Payments and Financial Services industry. She is experienced in delivering strategic and technical initiatives such as Digital Transformations for Financial Service businesses and global expansion programmes such as e-commerce, omni channel, APM’s, domestic and international schemes across multiple channels and gateways. Engaging with C suite executives across a range of enterprises. 

Clare gained a wealth of product management experience for Global banks and payment services, Trade Finance, Treasury, FX & Cash Management, with full operational management experience in credit risk, network settlements, reconciliations, payments, transaction monitoring, KYC / KYB onboarding, and payment investigations.

Clare joined Fnality International as Head of Technical Operations reporting directly to the CTO. Her role is to help design, build and power the future of financial markets using DLT for payments.

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 the founder of Open Economy Consulting, a specialist consultancy focused on Open Banking and payments. With over nine years of experience in the sector, he advises businesses on product strategy, commercial development, and organizational design while providing regulators and governments with in-depth industry insights.

Previously, Ciaran served as the CEO of Trustly UK, where he led the deployment of Open Banking payment solutions across a wide range of industries, including e-commerce, travel, automotive, financial services, and utilities. His earlier career includes roles in Financial Institutions M&A and quantitative risk management.

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.