PSR governance

Aidene Walsh joined the PSR Board on 1 June 2020 and served as its Interim Chair from 1 April 2022.  On 1 February, the PSR confirmed Aidene had been appointed as the PSR's first, dedicated permanent chair for a term of three years, effective immediately.

She is currently an Executive Director with Banking Competition Remedies Ltd (BCR), the Independent Body established to implement the Alternative Remedies Package of measures agreed between the UK Government and European Commission.  

Prior to joining BCR, she was CEO of The Fairbanking Foundation, a charity supporting organisations to put customer financial well-being at the heart of their propositions. In her 26-year banking career, she held various leadership roles in international and domestic Commercial and Transaction Banking businesses. These included European Transaction Banking in Citigroup and ABN Amro, Global Network Banking in RBS and Merchant Acquiring and Commercial Cards in Lloyds Banking Group. 

David had been the managing director of the PSR since June 2024. 

David Geale was appointed permanent executive director for payments and digital finance, and managing director of the Payment Systems Regulator (PSR) in May 2025.

As Managing Director, David is a member of the PSR board as Executive Director. Prior to this, he had been a non-executive director of the PSR Board since 2020.

He is responsible for helping deliver the National Payments Vision and driving the FCA’s work on open banking and digital finance. David will also play a key role in the work to consolidate the PSR into the FCA. He is also responsible for supervising payments and cryptoasset firms. 
 
David was previously director of retail banking at the FCA. He has worked at the FCA and its predecessor, the FSA, for more than 20 years, carrying out roles in policy and supervision. He was involved in leading and delivering policies such as the Retail Distribution Review and policy changes during the UK’s exit from the European Union.
 
More recently, David has led the FCA’s work on developing a regime for cryptoassets as well as savings rates and reforming the mortgage market as set out in the FCA’s letter to the Prime Minister on growth.

Tommaso Valletti joined the PSR Board in 2020.

He is Professor of Economics at Imperial College Business School, and also Professor of Economics at the University of Rome. He has previously taught at the London School of Economics, Telecom ParisTech/Ecole Polytechnique, and Turin.

He was the Chief Competition Economist of the European Commission (Directorate General for Competition) between 2016 and 2019. He was a board director of Consip, the Italian Public Procurement Agency. He has advised numerous bodies, including the EC, OECD, OFCOM, and the World Bank.

Tommaso’s main research interests are in industrial economics, regulation, and competition economics. He has published numerous articles in academic journals. He has a magna cum laude degree in engineering from Turin and holds a MSc and a PhD in economics from the London School of Economics.

Joanna has held a number of different senior roles in the energy and transport sectors and in economic regulation. She is currently an independent Non-Executive Director at SGN, a gas distribution business and she was Director General, Energy and Security at the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) from October 2018 to December 2022.

Joanna was the Chief Executive Officer at the Office of Rail and Road (ORR) from January 2016. She joined the ORR in 2014 as Director of Railway Markets and Economics with responsibility for ORR’s economic regulation and competition roles.

Prior to this she worked at Ofgem where she held a number of senior posts. In her last role as Partner for Markets, she was responsible for regulation of the wholesale gas and electricity markets.

Edward has held a number of non-executive director, board advisor and senior executive roles, with particular expertise in financial services, technology, strategy, risk and transformation.

He is a FTSE 100 non-executive director and Audit Committee member at F&C PLC, and Chair of both the Board Risk and Compliance Committee, and the Board Environmental, Social & Governance Committee for Mattioli Woods PLC, where he also serves on the Audit Committee and Nominations Committee.

He advises a wide range of organisations worldwide, including Perenna in Financial Technology.

Edward is also a member of the UK Endorsement Board, and serves as Chair of the Board Audit Committee and Chair of the Board Investment Committee at Asia House.

He was previously a Managing Director at HSBC Bank PLC, and prior to that a Director at Barclays Bank PLC, both in global roles, particularly focused on risk, technology and transformation. Prior to that he spent many years at McKinsey & Company advising clients worldwide.

Lara is a competition and regulatory economist with over 20 years’ experience. She is the founder of Sigma Economics, a boutique strategy and economics consulting firm. She is also a non-executive member on the boards of the Jersey Competition Regulatory Authority and Portsmouth Water, where she also chairs their Audit and Risk Committees.

Prior to setting up her own company Lara was a partner at Flint Global, where she set up their Competition and Regulatory practice. She also worked in senior roles at Ofcom (the UK communications regulator) and the CMA (the UK competition authority).

Lara is a trustee at Reform think-thank, dedicated to improving public services in the UK.

Sheldon has been Executive Director, Consumers and Competition at the FCA since December 2020, which includes overseeing policy and supervision of retail financial services, as well as the FCA’s competition market studies and enforcement activities. At the FCA, Sheldon chairs its Executive Regulation and Policy Committee, and he is the executive sponsor for the Consumer Duty and early careers. Sheldon co-chairs the Joint Regulatory Oversight Committee for Open Banking and he co-chaired the Climate Financial Risk Forum with the Bank of England. Sheldon joined the FCA in November 2018.

Previously, as Senior Director at the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), Sheldon had overall leadership responsibility for the delivery of UK merger control across the entire economy and for the strategic design and implementation of the new UK State Aid regime. He is a qualified solicitor and prior to joining the CMA he practised law at King & Wood Mallesons and Jones Day, counselling a range of UK and international clients in antitrust and competition law.

Jessica is the FCA's Chief Data, Information and Intelligence Officer.

Jessica leads the FCA's Data, Technology, and Innovation division, bringing together oversight of all FCA regulatory systems, including RegData, technology, including cloud, enterprise, and digital infrastructure, and Innovation Services, including the Regulatory and Digital Sandbox services.

Before joining the FCA, Jessica has 20 years of experience in analytics, risk management, and finance roles. Jessica’s previous roles included Chief Data Officer at Chetwood Financial, Senior Director of Finance & Analytics at eBay, and Head of Stress Testing and Analytics at GE Capital.