The Founders Bank project is a corporate challenger bank servicing the tech industry, including blockchain and other emerging technologies, aiming to provide banking services on a world class technology platform with a strong emphasis on customer experience and AML/KYC. Founders Bank project is in the process of obtaining a full EU banking license under the regulation of the MFSA and the European Central Bank.
The project has to date hired a senior c-suite, each of whom have more than fifteen years of experience in senior roles in financial services and technology businesses. The team members collectively bring wide-ranging expertise to the venture, having worked in senior regulated roles across various jurisdictions with global blue-chip companies such as Deutsche Bank, Barclays, HSBC, Citibank, Bank of America, Royal Bank of Canada, Brevan Howard, KPMG, Mastercard, Amazon, Paypal, IDEO and BitPesa.
Kenan has over 20 years experience in finance at Deutsche Bank. He has led 1,000+ employee teams, managed billions in revenue, and worked with dozens of regulatory bodies. Kenan heads Founders Bank with the same combination of professionalism and expertise it takes to run a leading multinational investment bank.
Paula has over 18 years of investment banking, M&A and private equity experience in London and Malta. She has worked with some of the largest blue-chip banks in the industry, such as Deutsche Bank, Barclays Capital and RBC, managing teams across various sectors of financial markets. She is also a tech investor and entrepreneur having set up a number of businesses from the ground up.
Alex spent the last 18 years working in the hedge fund industry, having previously worked in the funds and regulatory practice at Clifford Chance in London. For 14 years he was general counsel of Brevan Howard Asset Management with responsibility for setting and implementing group legal strategy and reported directly to the firm’s principal founder.
Lana is a senior operations professional with over 20 years spent in operations management. Most recently, she held the position of Global Head Banking and Markets Client Due Diligence at HSBC where she ran policy implementation, training, governance, and sponsored CDD transformation. Prior to this, she worked at Barclays running Global Markets and Banking KYC Risk and Control and Deutsche Bank across various products and functions such as KYC, Risk and Control, Settlements and Client Services.
Mark joins the team following a 20 year career at KPMG where he advised clients in both the public and private sectors. He has assisted a wide range of international clients seeking to incorporate banking subsidiaries or branches in Malta in gaining necessary approvals from regulatory authorities. Mark has strong problem-solving skills and a commitment to efficiency, cost-effectiveness, and growth, combined with three decades of experience in international business and expansion.
Gail has over 25 years of experience in Compliance and Risk oriented senior executive positions. She was recently the founder of a Hong Kong based financial crime compliance management consultancy firm. Prior to this, Gail was the Asia-Pacific Head of Financial Crime Compliance, International for HSBC. Prior to HSBC, she was Asia-Pacific Regional Head of Core AML functions for Citibank; In the UK, she was UK MLRO and held various Global and Regional AML roles for Deutsche Bank and Bank of America.
Dearg is best known for his success in scaling financial service products from concept to delivery, serving millions of active users and facilitating billions of transactions. He has focused his career in finance, payments, cross-border remittance, and banking, bringing a gold standard to security and advocating better local market compliance improvements, at times working directly with regulators such as the FCA, CBN, FDIC and GFSC to help influence policy change. Dearg’s 20 year career has seen him lead global projects with Unilever, KPMG, The Ministry of Defence, IDT Corps and most recently BitPesa.
André has worked for over 15 years in banking and consulting. André was Chief Risk Officer of Citibank U.K. Limited. In this role, André was responsible for the management of the bank’s risks holistically across liquidity, credit, market and operational risk areas. Prior to this, André held various roles in Corporate Treasury including as Citi’s Country Treasurer for Greece, Italy, Portugal, France, and Spain and formerly the liquidity risk manager of Citigroup Global Markets Limited. Before Citi, André worked as a consultant at IBM in the area of business continuity and disaster recovery for 6 years.
Prior to joining Founders Bank, Ludwig held an executive role as a Programme Manager within the IT department of Malta’s largest bank. Before joining BOV, he was employed with MeDirect Bank (Malta) as Head of Core Banking Platforms and spearheaded a number of platform implementations.
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