Risk Live

Kanwardeep Ahluwalia is co-head of global markets risk for Bank of America. He joined Bank of America from Swiss Re where he was the group head of financial risk management, which included the role of chief risk officer for asset management, as well as serving as the reinsurance chief risk officer for Emea. Prior to that, Ahluwalia worked at Bear Stearns where he had a number of positions leading to the roles of chief risk officer for Europe & Asia and global head of market risk. This was preceded by a period working in regulation for the UK’s former Securities & Futures Authority.

Chris Knight is currently the director of Market Partners Pty Ltd and is assisting the cross-asset electronic liquidity provider XTX Markets in its distribution push in Asia-Pacific. He was previously head of e-trading (East) FXRC at Standard Chartered where he was responsible for executing the banks electronic trading strategy across rates, FX and credit trading. Knight is a seasoned foreign exchange practitioner with over 25 years of foreign exchange trading experience. He returned to Australia a year ago after spending the 17 years of his career in Asia with senior roles in Tokyo, Hong Kong and Singapore. Knight is a member of the Global ACI FX Committee and is also a member of the Australian FX Committee which operates under the sponsorship of the Reserve Bank of Australia.

David Semmens is Cadro's chief investment officer, overseeing the investment department and chairing all investment related committees. He is a non-executive director of RiskSave Technologies, a leading provider of technological and regulatory support to asset managers and leading fintechs. Semmens continues to sit on Wealthify's investment committee as an external advisor where he helped develop and oversee the firm’s ethical investment proposition. He also volunteers on the investment committee for one of Scotland's largest education charities and is an adjunct-lecturer delivering a postgraduate finance and investment course at Heriot Watt University. 

Since completing an MSc in economics at the University of Warwick, Semmens has worked in London, Cardiff, Edinburgh, New York, and Paris, running the gauntlet in fintech, banking, insurance, and asset management for Wealthify (part of the Aviva Group), HSBC Asset Management, Euler Hermes, and Standard Chartered Bank. He is also a CFA Charterholder with an executive MBA from the University of Cambridge. In his spare time, Semmens enjoys playing cards, crime novels, and walking with his wife in the Highlands and Islands of Scotland.

Fredy is a financial services leader with extensive global experience across various business cycles and markets. His career spans leadership positions across a range of businesses including retail and consumer banking, small and medium enterprises, corporate and institutional banking as well as digital banking. His key skills include strategy, financial planning and analysis, control and compliance, balance sheet optimization, governance, finance operations, risk management, innovation, and transformation.

Fredy is passionate about people and has coached, mentored, and built high performing effective teams in dynamic environments in several markets and organizations. His recent success includes building & operationalizing a one-of-its-kind digital bank in Singapore, partnering with one of Singapore's most trusted institutions, NTUC. Outside of work Fredy has a keen interest in trekking, running, music, yoga, meeting people from different cultures and learning a new skill every year.

Sylvain is Chief Investment Officer at Namara Wealth Advisors a Singapore based independent asset manager focusing on innovative investments solutions for Wealth-Manager and Hedge-Funds. Over the past 3 years he has focused his research and investment around alternative risk premia in financials and digital assets.

Sylvain spent 6 years at BNP Paribas Asset Management, as equity portfolio manager.  He subsequently joined a billion dollar Multi-family Office in Switzerland focusing on equity and convertible bonds.

Sylvain relocated in Singapore in 2010, to set-up a MFO where he was Partner and Chief Investment Officer until the merger of the company in 2020. During his 10 years as CIO he launched several thematic investment programs, some of which are still running today, Uranium Renaissance, Asian Credit.

Sylvain holds a CFA Certification, received a Finance Master’s Degree from Concordia University in Canada, and an MBA in International Finance from IAE France with honor.

Fatema Bookwala is the Markets and Securities Services COO at HSBC Singapore with regional responsibilities in ASEAN (TH, MNL, VN). Fatema is a seasoned Front Office COO with 17+ years of Cross-Asset experience in Financial Services industry. Her areas of expertise include Strategy Development and Execution, Transformation, Regulatory Change, Risk Management and Governance as a strong business partner with all business infrastructure areas.
Fatema is a Rank holder Chartered Accountant from The Institute of Chartered Accountants of India and completed Level 3 CFA from CFA Institute Charlottesville.
Fatema is passionate about diversity & inclusion and sustainability initiatives, and is an active member of the Sustainability and Balance Employee Resource Groups at HSBC.

Jean Chia is Bank of Singapore’s Global CIO, responsible for the house view across Macroeconomics, Investment Strategy, FX, Equity & Fixed Income Research, as well as Discretionary Portfolio Management (DPM), Advisory Portfolio Management (APM) and Funds Selection teams at Bank of Singapore. She chairs the board of directors for BOS International Funds, Luxembourg and the OCBC Wealth Panel.

Jean has over 20 years of experience in Private Banking and Asset Management. Prior to her current role, she was Head, Equities Advisory & Sales, responsible for the equities and derivatives business at Bank of Singapore, and Head of Client Advisory Services for Equities, Investment Products & Services at UBS Wealth Management, Singapore.

Prior to UBS, she was Vice President, Head of Grassroots Research at Allianz Dresdner Asset Management (now known as Allianz Global Investors).

Jean graduated with an MA in Philosophy, Politics and Economics from University of Oxford, UK. She is currently on the Development Advisory Board of St Hilda’s College, University of Oxford.

Jean holds a Sustainable Finance certification from Cambridge Institute of Sustainable Leadership (CISL). She is a Financial Women’s Association of Singapore (FWA) Female Champion and an Institute of Banking and Finance (IBF) Fellow for Private Banking and Wealth Management.

Currently, I am the CRO at Cathay United Bank, Singapore which oversee all key risk types - Credit, Market, Liquidity and Operational Risks in a fairly sizeable wholesale banking outfit.

I am an experienced banker with extensive Risk Management and Client Coverage exposure gained through working with multiple client segments (Middle Market, Large Corporate, MNC & FI/NBFI) in varied industrial sectors which include but not limited to manufacturing, telecommunication, aviation & real estate/REIT.

I have covered different products/functions (Commercial Real Estate, Aviation & Capital Markets) across multiple geographies (Middle East, South Asia, ASEAN, Greater China & North East Asia).

 

Malcolm Griggs is the Chief Risk Officer of Citizens. He joined Citizens in 2014 as Executive Vice President and Chief Credit Officer. Griggs serves on the Executive Committee and as CRO is responsible for defining and overseeing how we manage credit, market, operational, regulatory, compliance, and model risk at Citizens and for leading the 2nd line of defense risk function. Griggs has over 30 years of risk and business line experience.

He joined Citizens from Citigroup where he was head of business risk and controls for the U.S. commercial and consumer banking businesses. Prior to this, he held senior risk management and business line roles at firms such as Morgan Stanley and Wachovia. He was also the first CRO at Fifth Third Bank. Griggs is active in industry organizations and is a past chairman of the board of the Risk Management Association (RMA). He currently serves as the President of the board of the Rhode Island Philharmonic Orchestra and Music School. He earned both his undergraduate and J.D. degrees from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Kim joined BMO in August 2021 from RBC where she was the Global Head of the Client, Banking & Digital Channels Technology group across Capital Markets.  Kim developed and implemented a comprehensive client data strategy adopted by Capital Markets, sunset legacy applications and united the global salesforce under a single CRM instance.  Collecting and connecting client touchpoints with external data sets allowed her team to proactively source opportunities and recommendations using advanced AI and machine learning to deepen client relationships and increase wallet share.  Kim held multiple roles at RBC over 15 years supporting the business in various capacities from running Global Fixed Income Production Services to Head of Fixed Income Sales and Credit Trading technology.

Prior to joining RBC, Kim ran Front Office technology at Mizuho as well as the API Connectivity Development team at ICAP and was part of the initial launch of BrokerTec. She has also held multiple positions across the street with Kidder Peabody, Deutsche Bank and Chase Securities. Kim received a BA from Stockton University in accounting.

Jasmine Burgess became the COO/CRO of Coinbase Asset Management, after an acquisition of One River Digital, a role she started in November 2021. Prior to One River Digital, she was appointed head of the US for Coremont in March 2020, Brevan Howard’s infrastructure spin-out after serving as Brevan Howard’s head of risk in New York from August 2016. Prior to joining Brevan Howard, Burgess was chief risk officer at Prologue Capital, a Greenwich, Connecticut-based hedge fund (April 2013 to July 2016). Prior to this buy-side focus, Jasmine worked at Macquarie Bank from August 2006 to March 2013. In March 2009, she transferred to New York as an associate director to assist building the fixed income, currencies and commodities trading floor after starting as a senior manager leading the market risk team in Sydney, Australia. Jasmine started her career at Citibank in 1999 before joining JP Morgan as an analyst within the Investment Banking Group in 2002.

Jeffrey is co-chief risk officer at Boothbay Fund Management, He is a former CRO, joining Antara Capital in October 2022 and serving as Chief Risk Officer (CRO) through early 2024.  Prior to Antara, Jeffrey spent 4 years as Chief Risk Officer of TPRV Capital, a multi-asset class relative value strategy, where he oversaw all aspects of risk management.  Prior TPRV, Jeffrey spent 10 years at Fortress Investment Group, finishing as the Director of Risk.  At Fortress, Jeffrey was responsible for market risk management of all liquid markets hedge fund strategies.