Keit Pentus-Rosimannus

Minister of Finance, Government of Estonia

Keit Pentus-Rosimannus is the Minister of Finance of the Republic of Estonia as of 26 January 2021. She is a member and Vice-Chairman of the Estonian Reform Party.

Keit has also held the following positions: from 2016–2021, member of the 13th and 14th Riigikogu, a member of the Foreign Affairs Committee and a member of the European Union Affairs Committee; from 2014–2015, Minister of Foreign Affairs; from 2011–2014, Minister of the Environment; from 2007–2011, a member of the 11th Riigikogu, a member of the Finance Committee, a member of the European Union Affairs Committee, and the Vice Chairman of the Riigikogu; and from 2005–2007, Head of the Prime Minister’s Office.

Keit graduated from Tallinn University in 2000 with a degree in public administration and European Union relations and received a master’s degree in international law and diplomacy from Tufts University (USA) in 2020.

Karen Cullen

Head of International Financial Services Unit and Fintech Steering Group, Department of Finance, Ireland

Based in Dublin, Karen is Head of the International Financial Services Unit and the Fintech Steering Group in Ireland’s Department of Finance. The unit supports the Minister of State, Sean Fleming TD, in the development and implementation of strategy for international financial services ‘Ireland for Finance’. This is a whole-of-government approach, with collaboration between the public sector and industry, to drive the growth and development of the sector in Ireland.

Doris Dietze

Head of Digital Finance, Payment Services and Cyber Security Division, Federal Ministry of Finance, Germany

Doris is head of Digital Finance, Payment Services and Cybersecurity at Germany’s Federal Ministry of Finance. Her responsibilities include the development of strategies with respect to fintechs and digitalisation of the financial market. She is also responsible for regulatory issues in this area (eg PSD2). Prior to this, she served as a speechwriter for the Minister of Finance.

She studied law at the universities of Trier, Münster and Reading (UK).

Mari-Liis Kukk

Head of Innovation Department, Financial Supervision and Resolution Authority, Estonia

Mari-Liis is Head of the Innovation Department at the Estonian Financial Supervision and Resolution Authority. In parallel, she leads the work of the authority’s Innovation Hub, which is aimed at helping fintech companies to understand how their solution may fit the regulatory environment. She is a PhD candidate at Tallinn University of Technology and her academic work revolves around the role of fintechs in building a novel financial sector. She has co-authored two editions of the Estonian FinTech Report.

Andrés Barragán

Director of the Cabinet and Financial Analysis, Treasury, Spain

Andrés is responsible for fintech regulation and Spain’s financial regulatory sandbox. He is also a member of the Financial Services Committee and Head of Financial Analysis in the Treasury. Andrés holds a degree in theoretical physics and a degree in philosophy from the Complutense University of Madrid. He joined the Spanish Corps of State Economists in 2017.

Dr Ben-Benedict Hruby, LL.M

Senior Legal Expert and Policy Advisor, Ministry of Finance, Austria

As well as having responsibility for the legal affairs of banks and the capital market, Ben-Benedict is in charge of legal aspects of innovation in the financial services industry. Currently, he is also representing Austria in negotiations of the Digital Finance Package at EU level.

He graduated from University of Vienna with a doctoral degree in laws and received both a bachelor’s and master’s degree in business law from Vienna University of Economics and Business.

Marine Krasovska

Director, Department of Financial Innovation, Financial and Capital Market Commission, Latvia

Marine heads the Financial and Capital Market Commission’s Department of Financial Innovation, manages its Innovation Hub and aims to facilitate the development of the fintech sector in Latvia. The Department of Financial Innovation is responsible for prudential supervision of fintechs and supervises ICT security across the financial industry. The department also plays a critical role in the development of SupTech and RegTech solutions.

Marine was co-founder of a fintech company, and has worked for Baltic banks Luminor, DNB and SEB.

Taavi Tamkivi

Board Member, European Fintech Association

Taavi is the founder and CEO of Salv, an Estonian-based RegTech company founded in 2018. Passionate about crime-fighting, Taavi has two decades of compliance experience – firstly leading Skype’s anti-fraud team and then building Wise’s anti-money laundering team and tooling. At Skype, he learned the challenges of managing and analysing massive data sets; at Wise, the value of building iterative, fast-scaling tooling that meets the needs of the ever-changing financial crime landscape.

At Salv, Taavi is marrying these experiences with an unswerving determination to beat financial crime – by building faster, smarter, data-driven cross-border technology. Outside of Salv, Taavi is a board member and head of the AML working group at the European Fintech Association, and board member and fintech lead for Finance Estonia. 

Euan Slack

Head of Grants Digital, Cabinet Office, UK

Euan is responsible for the development and adoption of digital tools within the UK Cabinet Office’s Government Grants Management Function. He was appointed Head of Spotlight – an automated due diligence tool, designed and built at the Cabinet Office, that provides UK Government with a tool designed specifically to meet its due diligence needs – in August 2020. Spotlight is now used widely across UK government, with all customers feeding in application data that helps build an intelligence picture of exactly who is applying for government funding and when. He was previously Head of Private Office.

Aleksejs Čekalovs

Senior Expert, EU Funds Audit Department, Ministry of Finance, Latvia

Aleksejs’ role has a focus on public procurement, state aid and conflicts of interest. He is the initiator of automatic conflict-of-interest checks in Latvia’s e-procurement system and is involved in Anti-Fraud Coordination Service-Latvia (AFCOS-LV) activities. He regularly participates in national and international working groups, sharing his knowledge as an expert in TAIEX (technical assistance and information exchange) missions and other international events.

Prior to the Ministry of Finance, Aleksejs was based in Latvia’s Ministry of Environmental Protection and Regional Development, working on audits related to European Union (EU) ETC (European Territorial Cooperation)/CBC (Cross-Border Cooperation) programmes.

He is interested in discussing possible positive fintech influence on the future of public procurements and audit.

Valentina Ion

Director Business Strategy, Microsoft

Valentina is in charge of Microsoft’s sales and industry solutions strategy for the public finance industry, including the delivery of fintech solutions that enable governments to embark on the digital transformation journey. She is also in charge of building and developing strategic partnerships with ICT, advisory, academia and international organisations.

She has a diverse background in industry sales strategy and execution, partnerships management, marketing and product management, as well as business operations. With more than 21 years’ experience in ICT and business transformation, Valentina is passionate about business re-engineering and digital transformation for better economy and society. She holds a Masters in Finance & Accounting.

Jerome Bryssinck

Director of Government Solutions, Quantexa

Jerome has spent 16 years working with many large government institutions globally to combat fraud and financial crime in the public sector. Tax-related projects include the deployment of fraud detection systems covering multiple domains (for example, VAT carousel fraud, offshore fraud and profit-shifting) for Belgium, Netherlands, Estonia, Spain and Singapore. Jerome also advises tax, customs and welfare administrations in Hungary, Australia, Greece, Poland, Slovakia, Austria, France and Belgium.

Evelyn Liivamägi

Deputy Secretary General, Financial an Tax Policy, Ministry of Finance, Estonia

Evelyn took up her post as Deputy Secretary-General for Financial and Tax Policy at Ministry of Finance on 7 March 2022. She has extensive experience working in Estonian Tax and Customs Board, where she served as the Head of Tax Department between 2011-2022, Head of Direct Taxes Unit in the period 2004-2011 and Internal Auditor 2001-2004. She has a Masters Degree from Academy Nord, which is now joined with Tallinn University.

Dr Michal Tuláček

Head of the General Tax Legislation Unit, Finance Ministry, the Czech Republic

Michal leads the General Tax Legislation unit in the Czech Republic, where he prepares legislative proposals in the area of taxes, charges and other similar payments, AML and gambling. Additionally, he teaches tax and legislation-related lectures at Prague’s Charles University. His expertise includes the field of tax administration, which includes payments to public budgets at all levels of government. He holds a university degree in computer science with a focus on artificial intelligence (AI). He is interested in introducing new technologies to the area of tax administration.

Rainer Olt

Head of Payment and Settlement Systems Department, Eesti Pank, Estonia

Rainer joined Eesti Pank in 2011, having previously spent more than six years in retail banking. He started in a catalyst role at Eesti Pank, promoting the smooth operation of payment systems and the overall harmonisation and integration of the payments market. He has worked at the European Central Bank (ECB) in Frankfurt in two different stints. Since October 2020 his team entered into a research project with a focus on investigating the suitability of Estonia’s e-government core technology for central bank digital currency (CBDC) and contributed into the national central bank-led CBDC experimentation work co-ordinated by the ECB. Olt also chairs the Estonian Retail Payments Forum.

Mehmet Kerse

Senior Consultant, Digital Finance and Financial Inclusion, CGAP / World Bank Group

Mehmet is a digital finance consultant. He works with CGAP, a think tank housed at the World Bank, on digital financial services regulation and supervision – recently focusing on fintech, digital banking, mobile money, digital currencies, instant payments, and anti-money laundering (AML) regulations for financial inclusion. He has more than 15 years of experience working on financial inclusion, financial regulatory and supervisory issues, and consumer protection. He has worked with numerous regulators and supervisors primarily in Sub-Saharan Africa, Southeast Asia, and Arab countries. Mehmet began his career as a bank supervisor in the Banking Regulation and Supervision Authority of Turkey and previously worked on AML projects for the World Bank. Mehmet has a Master’s degree in Public Administration from Harvard University and a Bachelor’s degree in Economics from Bilkent University.

Siobhan Benita

Event Moderator, Global Government Fintech & Global Government Forum

Siobhan was a senior civil servant in the UK with more than 15 years’ Whitehall experience. She worked in many of major delivery departments, including Transport, Environment, Health and Local Government. She also had senior roles at the heart of government in the Cabinet Office and HM Treasury, including supporting the then Cabinet Secretary, Lord O’Donnell, to lead work on civil service reform and strategy. Siobhan left to run as an independent candidate in the Mayor of London election. She subsequently joined her alma mater, Warwick University, as Chief Strategy Officer of Warwick in London and Co-Director of the Warwick Policy Lab.

Ian Hall

Editor, Global Government Fintech

Ian is editor of Global Government Fintech. He is former UK director for the pan-European media network Euractiv (2011-2018), editor of Public Affairs News (2007-2011) and news editor of PR Week (2000-2007). He was shortlisted for ‘Editor of the Year’ at the British Society of Magazine Editors (BSME) Awards in 2010. He began his career in Bulgaria at English-language weekly the Sofia Echo.