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Marco is a co-founder and COO of CLARK. He has nine years of experience in management consulting: In more than 50 projects, he supported leading insurance companies and financial sales organizations in strategic changes. Marco is a trained business lawyer and holds a doctorate in business administration. As an insurance broker, he also personally advised private and commercial clients for several years and learned the trade from scratch 20 years ago.

Dr Markus Ampenberger is a Partner and Associate Director based in BCG's Munich office with focus on payments and transaction banking. He is advising banks, specialized payment providers and FinTechs on strategy, transformation and digitization.

Paul is CEO and co-founder of re:cap, a digital funding platform for companies of the subscription economy. In this role, Paul is responsible for strategy, commercial direction and investor relations of the company. Prior to launching re:cap, Paul co-founded the digital wealth management platform LIQID, today Europe’s leading wealth tech for affluent clients managing more than 1.7 bn EUR, and led it for over three years. He had also co-founded the fintech consultancy firm &do, with which he occasionally invests in early-stage startups. Paul holds a degree in Computer Science and Business Management.

Franz-Xaver Burner is a Co-Founder and the Chief Growth Officer of bsurance, a market-leading insurtech start-up which specialises in B2B2C business models in the insurance sector. 
Drawing on his proven track record of breaking into and scaling new B2B markets, Franz-Xaver heads up all sales and business development opportunities as part of the business’ progressive expansion plans.
With over two decades in the B2B digital market, Franz-Xaver boasts an unrivalled wealth of experience in driving multiple sales and marketing disciplines in both large and small technology companies, as well as digital agencies. 
Prior to joining bsurance, Franz-Xaver occupied a mentoring role at leading headless CMS technology pioneer, Storyblok and worked as a senior consultant at digital recruitment provider, epunkt. He has an Executive MBA from the Danube University Krems.
 

GROUP CFO, DEGIRO CEO

flatexDEGIRO | since August 2015

Developed a German online brokerage hidden champion into the leading pan-European and publicly-listed retail financial supermarket, growing the market capitalization of the company during my tenure by more than € 2 billion

GLOBAL HEAD OF FINANCE

Lamudi, a Rocket Internet Venture | July 2014 – August 2015

Responsibility for the strategic and operational financial management of a real estate classifieds platform operating in nine Asian and Latin American countries, including various funding rounds and M&A activities

M&A – REAL ESTATE AND FINANCIAL SERVICES

pwc Germany | May 2011 – August 2011 and March 2013 – July 2014

Transaction and financing advisory services in various real estate share and asset deals with a total transaction volume of more than € 2 billion

M&A – CORPORATE ADVISORY GROUP

UBS Germany | September 2012 – February 2013

M&A deal preparation and assistance of two transactions with a transaction volume of more than € 100 million as well as research and analysis of various industries in the context of sector analysis reports

Sascha Dewald is Senior Vice President Retail Banking of Deutsche Kreditbank AG, DKB and member of the board at Payments Europe, an association of global and European card-based payment solutions providers created to strengthen the voice of the industry.. Before his recent position, Sascha managed FinReach (now finleap connect) as CEO. FinReach is a Berlin-based Fintech company that develops digital solutions for financial services that unify industry knowledge with technical know-how and a product-centric thinking. Furthermore, he co-founded Paylogic Germany in 2010 and sold it four years later. Paylogic is a ticketing company for music, culture and sports organiser with a very innovative and technology driven approach. Currently, he is member of the Mastercard supervisory board and board member of the FinTech and Banking working group of BITKOM e.V. Aside from his businesses, he serves as a mentor, advisor, coach and Angel to upcoming digital entrepreneurs. 

Dr Roland Folz is Chief Executive Officer of Solarisbank AG (since February 2017). Roland has over 25 years of experience in the banking and financial services sector, with additional senior management expertise in the mobility and telecoms industries. He joined Solarisbank from Deutsche Bank, where he spent almost eight years in various regional and global CFO responsibilities. Prior to Deutsche Bank he held executive roles within the T-Com/T-Home division for Deutsche Telekom AG and was CEO of DaimlerChrysler Bank AG. As Co-CEO of Direkt Anlage Bank AG, Roland expanded Germanys first discount broker into 6 European countries, eventually taking the company public in 1999.

Mr Fusswinkel has been a Member of the BaFin since 2009. Having first dealt with fundamental questions relating to the regulatory perimeter of new business and investment models, including cross-border issues, he has been head of the Strategic Division on Financial technological innovations, which he has set up since June 2017. In this function, it acts as an Innovation Hub and deals with the analysis and possible impact of innovative financial technologies and related business models on regulation and supervision. His current priorities include regulatory and supervisory implications relating to crypto assets and related phenomena such as decentralised finance (DeFi). Among other things, he helped regulate the crypto custody business and was a head of the Council working group during Germany’s Presidency in 2020 on the European Commission’s regulatory proposal for markets in crypto assets (“Mica”).

Peter is Co-Founder and CTO at Unstoppable Finance GmbH a Berlin based company with the mission to empower people around the world to access, interact with and unlock financial opportunities of the decentralized economy. Before he was CTO and MD at Börse Stuttgart Digital Exchange, the first regulated digital asset exchange in Germany. Before he was CTO and co-founder at solarisBank. Peter has a technology and entrepreneurial background. In 2008 he founded a software engineering consultancy out of university and grew it to profitability. In 2014 he came to Berlin to join the company builder Hitfoxgroup and Finleap that focuses on fintech as CTO. Blockchain and decentralization fascinates him from the moment he got in touch at the end of 2016. Since then he has shaped the vision to bring decentralized finance to reality.

Sebastian studied law in Freiburg, Bonn and Hong Kong and Chinese in Beijing. After his studies Sebastian analysed the political and human rights situation in Iran as member of the German Embassy in Tehran, hunted white-collar criminals during his time at the Department of Public Prosecution in Frankfurt and eventually joined the private equity group of an international law firm. Sebastian likes disruptive business models. Sebastian is co-founder and managing director of Friendsurance.

Caroline Jenke is Chief Legal Officer and part of the management team at pliant, the most flexible corporate card solution for every business EU-wide (getpliant.com).
Prior, she was Chief Legal and Regulatory Officer at FinTecSystems, one of the leading open banking and data analytics providers in the DACH region. Before that, Caroline worked for Sofort / Klarna as General Counsel and headed the legal department of the rapidly growing Fintech company. With over 12 years of experience in financial technology, Caroline brings not only deep legal knowledge but also a profound technical understanding of Open Finance and the payment industry.
Furthermore Caroline is Board Member of Bitkoms's Working Group FinTech & Digital Banking.

Martin Kassing is CEO and founder of Berlin-based fintech Upvest. With over 15 years of experience in fintech and capital markets, Martin founded Upvest with the goal of making investing as easy as spending money. Therefore, Upvest developed an investment API that enables other FinTechs to provide their savers with access to the full range of investment opportunities. Before building his own company, Martin was private equity manager at Avedon and COO at the fintech ShopCo. ShopCo successfully expanded into the US and was acquired by Klarna in 2018.

Christine Kiefer is the founder and CEO of RIDE, the first fintech start-up to focus on real returns after taxes and costs. RIDE helps investors structure and manage their assets professionally.

Christine has been involved in building several fintechs, including BillPay and Pair Finance. In addition to her entrepreneurial activities, Christine founded Fintech Ladies, a network for women involved in digitalisation and innovation in finance. Christine is a member of the Fintech Council of the Federal Ministry of Finance and previously worked at Goldman Sachs in London.

Advisor to various technology companies

Management experience >6 years

Experienced Business builder, payment expert and founder. Since 2020 managing director at Paymenttools - a REWE group corporate startup along Commercetools and Fulfillmenttools.

Our vision is to create a new payment ecosystem by retailers for retailers and any other business which need a modern and state-of-the-art payment and commerce solution across all channels.

Prior Paymenttools over 15 years in consulting such as strategy & technology consulting, digital transformation and company building; helping corporates to spin-off and scale their digital services and business models

Supporting digital transformations for large European corporates such as Visa, Sparkassen Finanzgruppe, Daimler, ApoBank, Lanxess, HDI.

Susanne Krehl is the founder and Managing Director of Fabit, which she founded in 2021 together with Dr. Ralf-Michael Schmidt and Robert Heim. As Managing Director Austria and Switzerland, the 36-year-old was responsible for the internationalization of the Berlin-based fintech company viafintech and was honored with the Digital Female Leader Award in 2018 and named to Capital Magazine's 'Top 40 unter 40' in 2021. Susanne is also founder and host of the event series FinTech Stammtisch Berlin and ambassador of FinTech Ladies.

Picture credit: (c)"Fabit GmbH/Mike Auerbach

Luisa Kruse is a Senior Innovation Manager at the Frankfurt Innovation Hub TechQuartier. She currently leads the research & development project Financial Big Data Cluster (safeFBDC), with the aim to pilot solutions and standards for the cross-institutional use of financial data. The project consortium under the leadership of TechQuartier, consists of 11 partners and numerous associated partners covering a large part of the German financial industry. Previously, Luisa worked for three years in the technology consulting department of Pricewaterhouse Coopers in Frankfurt am Main and Berlin. During her academic career, she obtained a degree in economics (B.Sc.) and business informatics (M.Sc.).

Former Head of Technology for Geospatial Intelligence unit, Izik Lavy, has a strong track record in property intelligence solutions and location based services employing machine learning and big data analytics.

Mairead McGuinness is the European Commissioner for financial services, financial stability and Capital Markets Union.

The Commissioner’s vision for the portfolio is focused on ensuring the financial sector’s strength and stability, so that it can deliver for people, society and the environment.

Before joining the Commission in October 2020, Ms McGuinness was First Vice-President of the European Parliament from 2017. She served as an MEP from Ireland for 16 years, and was a Vice-President of the Parliament since 2014.

As Vice-President, she oversaw relations with national Parliaments, led the Parliament’s dialogue with religious and philosophical organisations, and had responsibility for the Parliament’s communication policy.

During her time in the Parliament, Ms McGuinness sat on a range of committees, covering agriculture, environment, public health, budgets, petitions and constitutional affairs. Her legislative work included leading for the EPP Group on the European Climate Law, the revision of medical devices legislation, and CAP reform post-2013. As an Irish MEP representing the border region, she was outspoken on Brexit and the consequences for the EU and Ireland.

In 2006-2007, Ms McGuinness chaired the Parliament’s investigation into the collapse of the Equitable Life assurance company which identified issues around weak financial regulation.

Prior to becoming an MEP, she was an award-winning journalist, broadcaster and commentator.

Abid is one of the Global Head of Wise Platform at Wise.

Abid leads the expansion of Wise Platform through which Wise enables enterprises around the world access to a range of cross-border payment services, including sending and receiving money internationally at the real exchange rate. Today, Wise Platform is used by more than 25 financial institutions incl. Monzo, N26, Google Pay and Shinhan Bank.

Prior to joining Wise Abid has held previous roles at HSBC and Credit Suisse.

https://www.moderatorin-katrin-neumann.de/

Max is a partner at BCG in the Payments Consulting Team. Before BCG, Max held management positions at Nets as Chief of Staff to the Merchant Services CEO and as Head of Risk taskforce, moreover, he has several years of consulting expertise. His work focuses on strategy, M&A and risk management.

Initiator, Berlin Finance Initiative & CEO, East German Banking Association
Achim Oelgarth has been working in the financial industry and advises tech startups for over 20 years now. He is the CEO of the East German Banking Association and he lately initiated the Berlin Finance Initiative (BFI) on ist way to become the voice of Berlin's hub for technology based finance and digital economy. Previously, as UniCredit‘s Head of Institutional Affairs Germany, he was responsible for the political and regulatory affairs team of the pan-European bank. Before that, from 2004 to 2009, he established and led the representative office of the Association of German Banks at the European Union in Brussels. Achim studied law at the University of Bonn. In 1998 he was admitted to the bar. At MIT Sloan School of Management he has been doing research on artificial intelligence and its implications on business strategy.

Torben Rabe is Country Director of Qonto Germany, the leading finance management solution in Europe. Torben is known for his know-how on FinTech and finance topics, as well as innovative and strategic business planning within the DACH region. He is particularly passionate about the digitalisation of the German Mittelstand, as well the success of the German & European startup ecosystem. He started his career in 2016 in management consulting at Oliver Wyman with a focus on business and digital strategies for traditional banks. With further positions at Lendico (Rocket Internet) and Bird, he feels at home in both the finance and start-up worlds. He has not only lived in Germany, but also in France, India, the USA and Spain.

Marcos Raiser do Ó manages Stripe's operations in Germany, Austria and Switzerland as well as in the Central and Eastern Europe region. After studying business administration at the Goethe University in Frankfurt am Main, he worked for Sun Microsystems, IBM and Salesforce. Subsequently, he was responsible for Microsoft’s entire business with banks, insurance companies and financial service providers in Germany. After a further stint at IPsoft, Marcos Raiser do Ó joined Stripe in February 2020.

Nina is part of the Berlin-based investment team at Earlybird since January 2019 and focuses on early-stage investments in the fields of FinTech & InsureTech. She is a lawyer by training (specialized in IT & Privacy Law) and gained hands-on startup experience with Celonis and Forto before.

CEO @ Spott, data and product executive, previously VP of Product at Planck, an AI-powered data platform for commercial insurance.

Philipp Schmitt is a member of the German Executive Team and responsible for customer growth in the consumer business. Prior to his current role he held roles in product management, business transformation and customer experience at American Express since 2011. He originally started his career in corporate banking at Dresdner Bank and is a graduate of the University of Mannheim.

Aiga Senftleben is Co-Founder of Billie, a Berlin based, breakthrough fintech startup that aims to upgrade the operating system of B2B payments. Aiga is a trained solicitor and before founding Billie, she gained experience in the Fintech and payments sector through working as General Counsel of Funding Circle Europe as well as Legal Counsel for PayPal. 

BA - Business & marketing at Reichmann University Herzliya
MBA- Business & International Business Management at Regents university European Business School
2012-2015 - Insurance broker Israel
2016-2018 - Reinsurance broker @ Shepherd Compello Lloyds of London
2018- 2020 - Head of Cyber, Innovation & reinsurance relations @ Kesh international underwriters Israel
2020-2022 - Co-founder at Connected Insurance
 

Gustav Spät joined Bitkom in 2022 and works in the fields of Digital Insurance & InsurTech and Digital Banking & Financial Services. In his role, he drives forward the digitization of the Insurance and Finance Ecosystem.
Before working at Bitkom, Gustav gained practical experiences in the development of inclusive financial systems and insurance solutions. He holds a Master's degree in Economics from KU Leuven.
 

Passionate about creating categories. Fully committed to elevate finance functions globally.

Sibylle Strack has a passion for banking, payments and fintech and is an investor and mentor in this field. In 2021 she joined Deutsche Bank as Chief Growth Officer in the business customer area. She started her career as a consultant at Accenture and later headed the current accounts and payments strategy at the German Savings Banks Association. In 2018 she joined Kontist, the digital banking challenger, as Co-CEO. Sibylle has a broad board expertise, amongst others with Mastercard in Germany and foodwatch, a European customer rights organisation. She is a trained banker and holds an MBA from the University of Passau.

Dr Verena Thaler is Chief of Staff at Raisin and responsible for the company’s strategic business development, transformation, and portfolio management. After helping Raisin grow its network to include over 300 banking and fintech partners, Verena took charge of leading the company’s transformation after the merger with Deposit Solution to become one of the largest fintechs in Europe. Prior to joining Raisin, Verena served as Junior Partner at McKinsey & Company.

As an Austrian, Verena is a big fan of freshly roasted coffee, snow-capped mountains and Styrian pumpkin seed oil. But she has long since lost her heart to Berlin, where she lives.

Jan van Vonno has been leading Tink's research and thought leadership programme since 2018. He has been responsible for the positioning of Tink within the context of open banking and supporting the strategic decision making of financial executives. Jan is a member of several steering groups across the EU and the UK to help shape the future of open banking, open finance, and open data economies.

Copying Linda - Tink's Director of PR & Comms

Jürgen von der Lehr is Head of Strategy and Business Development of ING. In this role he is responsible for ING’s strategy, M&A, innovation and sustainability activities. Jürgen has 20 years of experience in the Financial Services industry and has gained extensive digital skills as well as strategic and operational expertise in retail and corporate experience banking. Prior to his role at ING, Jürgen was Head of Digital Innovation and Head of Online Brokerage at Deutsche Bank and a Partner at Oliver Wyman. He has a degree in business administration (Diplom-Kaufmann) from Mannheim University.

Dikla Wagner represents MunichRE in Israel and is head of technology scouting. Dikla is an Israeli key opinion leader and a speaker in the world of insurtech and insurance technology. The Israeli entrepreneurial ecosystem has been Dikla's home for the past 15 years, as an entrepreneur, VC investor, and consultant. She is an economist and lawyer from a prestigious university. Also, she is the chairman of the Israeli Insurtech Alliance.

Kristina has over 10 years of digital experience and is now the CEO and former CPO at Nuri, formerly called Bitwala. Before starting her roles at Nuri, she has worked at N26 and Zalando during their hyper-growth stages. At N26 she was the product lead and at Zalando she was in the loyalty and Mobile Apps team, where she delivered customer-centric solutions and drove the mobile mindset within Zalando’s various departments.

Before building products on the company side, Kristina worked as Mobile Consultant and Account Manager for agencies like Aperto and Iconmobile, building up mobile strategies and creating innovative mobile solutions for major clients in the retail, television, NGO and automotive industries.

Fabian is a former investment banker with a strong track record as a founder, investor and mentor of successful start-ups. Fabi oversees the financial strategy for wefox Group, including preparation of the business and investment case for each investment funding round. He is also the co-founder of EMPAUA, which is one of Europe’s highly successful start-up incubators where he and Julian Teicke (CEO and co-founder) launched wefox Group.

Jan is co-founder and Managing Director of BANKSapi. BANKSapi is a BaFin-regulated Banking-as-a-Service provider and one of the leading open banking and data analytics providers in Germany.

Beforehand, he has worked several years as Manager for KPMG in Germany, where he advised financial institutions on digital transformation, strategy development, regulatory and cooperation with FinTech startups.

At the Deutsche Bundesbank, Dr Heike Winter is responsible for policy issues relating to digitalisation in payments. This comprises committee work in the Eurosystem on retail payments and the project on a digital euro. After completing her degree in economics, Heike worked at an institute for economic theory. She joined the Deutsche Bundesbank in February 1999, working initially in the Public Relations and Economic Education Departments before transferring to the Payments Department in March 2007.

Miriam Wohlfarth is a serial Fintech founder and founded one of the first Fintechs in Germany, the payment service provider Ratepay. With her latest company Banxware, she revolutionizes the European lending sector and enables platforms to offer banking products.

With more than 20 years of experience in payment, banking and eCommerce Miriam knows the payment world and online retail like no other.

As a passionate founder, Miriam is committed to the startup ecosystem, cooperation between business and politics, and digital education through various advisory boards and initiatives. Over the years she also became a LinkedIn Business Influencer with 23.000 followers and counting.