Bio

Heading Standard Chartered’s Fintech Client Advisory team, René led the establishment of a global business line focussed on building strategic partnerships with Fintech platforms and delivering core banking services across Asia, Africa and the Middle East. An engaged and dynamic leader; he has built a team of trusted advisors within the bank and to its fintech clients where their expertise in fintech, payments, regulation, blockchain, crypto currencies, fiat tokens and the evolution of central bank digital currencies has continued to drive key innovations and the modernisation of the bank’s approach to fintech. René is well entrenched in the Fintech community supporting meet-up, industry podcasts, academic research and speaking at industry events where he challenges the industry to constantly do better. With an ability to find and connect talent René continues to drive innovation through the establishment of an enterprise grade AI and Machine Learning platform to deliver client insights, first line risk management and financial crime risk mitigation. This project is a collaboration across multiple business lines with talent from all different areas in the bank and has developed interest from both regulators and clients. René also co-led the bank’s collaboration with a major Chinese firm to develop their blockchain based, real-time cross-border, wallet-to-wallet payments solution. This was enabled through strong sponsorship and by building a team of innovators from across the bank to adapt to new challenges and was delivered from whiteboard to live in production with nodes running in the client’s blockchain network and payments flowing in eight weeks. René joined the bank in 2016 and is based in Singapore. Prior to this he worked at HSBC leading the payments and collections product business across Asia Pacific and developing product innovations leveraging mobile wallets and a range of new technologies improve the customer relevance of legacy platforms. Rene has also worked for ANZ and National Australia bank where he was awarded for innovation in relation to the establishment of a cloud-based merchant platform and the establishment of a carbon trading capability respectively. René served as an officer in the Australian Army, is passionate about Rugby Union and is committed to equality and the promotion of diversity.