Speakers

M. Briand holds a Master in Economics and Finance from the ICN Business School in Nancy, France. He started its career in the private sector as risk Analyst at Newedge Group in Paris (Société Générale Group), and then as Account Manager for BNP Paribas Securities Services in Paris. 

Mr. Briand then moved to Luxembourg to work for the Kurt Salmon consulting group (now Wavestone). Its main assignment as consultant was the European Central Bank in Frankfurt in the TARGET2 Securities (T2S) programme office.

He joined the Banque Centrale du Luxembourg (BCL) in 2015 to continue the T2S project implementation in Luxembourg, and then contributed to Eurosystem projects, like Target Consolidation, or the SWIFT Customer Security Program implementation as well as other BCL projects. Besides these projects, he worked on concrete research on innovation in the field of Market Infrastructures (inc. DLT/Blockchain) and contributed to the CBDC dossier (Retail and wholesale). In addition to participating in several Eurosystem task forces, he represents Luxembourg at the OECD task force on Fintech and innovation, and represents the BCL in the same field at the Luxembourg Banking Association (ABBL).

Josselin Hebert is the Senior Digital Innovation Officer in the Chief Financial Officer Department at the ESM.

He designed and implements the digital innovation strategy of the ESM, exploring how recent technologies may improve the ESM’s work and prepare it for the future. These technologies include artificial intelligence, blockchain, natural language understanding, natural language generation, and automation.

Prior to that, Josselin focused on digital innovation in retail and commercial banking in the private sector.

Josselin holds an MSc in Engineering from Ecole CentraleSupelec, and the ICMA Fixed Income Certificate. He also holds a Lean Six Sigma practitioner and an UX-PM level 2 certificates.

Claudine HURMAN is Director of Innovation and Financial Market Infrastructures in the Directorate General of Financial Stability and Operations of Banque de France. Claudine’s Directorate is in charge of running operations on the French part of the Eurosystem Target Services, of Financial Market Infrastructures oversight, of resilience -including cyber resilience-, of the monitoring of developments in crypto-assets, notably in the context of the EU Pilot Regime. Claudine’s Directorate also conducts exploratory work and experiments on wholesale central bank digital currencies, with an extensive experimentation program on wholesale CBDC1, and the second tranche of its experimentation program currently running.

Claudine HURMAN has over 25 years of experience working for the French central bank, with a background in the private sector. At the French Prudential and Resolution Authority, she was in charge of the supervision of foreign banks, before joining the Directorate General of Financial Stability and Operations, where she headed respectively two divisions, in charge of the control of financial markets operations and later on as head of the market infrastructures and payment systems oversight division. 

Before joining Banque de France, Claudine HURMAN worked in the field of auditing, in the banking and finance sector, in the UK and in France. She graduated from EDHEC Business School, with a post-graduate degree in finance at the London School of Economics and Political Science.

John Jackson is the Policy and Product Lead for the Real-Time Gross Settlement (RTGS) Renewal programme, working in the Bank of England’s Payments Directorate. 

During his 20+ years at the Bank John has worked in the Markets, Financial Stability and Prudential Policy areas. He has also spent a year on secondment at the New York Fed, working in their Financial Institutions Supervision Group. 

John joined the RTGS Renewal programme in December 2015 as the Business Lead. He played a key role in developing the Blueprint for renewing the UK’s RTGS service and is responsible for Policy and Product development on the future shape of RTGS. In 2020 John represented the Bank on the CPMI Cross-Border Payments Task Force. 

Akinchan (Aki) Jain is Manager and Head of Asset and Liability Operations at the World Bank Treasury. In this role, Aki leads a global team responsible for a range of middle office functions for a large, fixed income and derivatives portfolio. This includes approx. $250bn in outstanding debt issuance and $650bn in derivatives for the World Bank, and $185 billion in assets under management for the World Bank and 60+ clients including central banks and official institutions. As part of his responsibilities, Aki leads large business and technology projects and manages relationships with clients, market counter parts, custodians, paying agents, and technology vendors.   

Previously, as Senior Financial Officer in the Structured Finance and Derivatives team at the World Bank Treasury, Aki played a key role in managing the $60 billion funding and derivatives program for the World Bank’s IBRD and IDA entities. Aki designed, structured, and executed customized and innovative capital markets solutions to support the needs of World Bank's investors and clients. Aki has worked on several landmark transactions and initiatives, including the World Bank’s first catastrophe bond, the first global pandemic bond, the first bond linked to the achievement of the Sustainable development Goals, a social impact bond to incentivize the reduction of carbon emissions, and a guarantees and blended finance facility to help countries affected by the refugee crisis. In previous roles, Aki led the middle and back-office teams supporting the capital markets business.

Aki’s areas of interest include fintech, central bank digital currencies (CBDC), ESG investments, climate finance, impact bonds, and insurance-linked securities. 

Aki holds a bachelor’s degree in economics from SRCC in Delhi University and an MBA in Finance from American University.

Xavier has over 15 years of banking experience. He joined the EIB in 2009 running the Eastern European funding portfolio (RUB, TRY, PLN, HUF, RON) before taking over the responsibility of the GBP funding programme for the institution in 2011.

He managed among other things the first public tender of the EIB in GBP as well as the issuance of the first SONIA FRN. For the last 2 years Xavier has been working on the new Risk Free Rates and issued benchmarks based on SOFR, ESTR and SONIA, lately he was involved with the structuring of the blockchain transaction.

Prior to joining the EIB Xavier held various responsibilities at CM-CIC and BNP Paribas mainly in the debt or debt capital markets side of business.

Xavier graduated from the University of Nancy with a master in European law and a master in Finance; he also holds a master degree in strategy from the University of Växjö (Sweden).

Andras Valko joins the BIS Innovation Hub as an advisor in the Paris office from May 2023. Prior to this role he has been a member of the executive leadership team of SBAB Bank (Sweden) with a responsibility for data, analytics, and AI. Earlier he has held leadership positions within agile software development, product management, business development, and applied research.

Andras holds a Ph.D. in computer science, an M.Sc. in electrical engineering, and a B.Sc. in economics. 

Martin Vesely has been working at “Czech National Bank” for 10 years. He started his career as programmer and data analyst at “Risk Management Department”. Currently, he is a risk manager focusing on credit risk and portfolio construction (strategic asset allocation). Besides, he is responsible for development of reporting tools. His duties also comprise research activities, in particular application of a quantum computing in finance.

Before he joined CNB, he worked at Czech subsidiary of “Erste Group” as an analyst in “Assets and Liabilities Management Department”. His main responsibilities comprised reporting and data management.

He graduated (Summa cum Laude) from “Faculty of Nuclear Sciences and Physical Engineering” at “Czech Technical University”. His branch of study was “Software Engineering in Economics” (MSc). 

During university studies, he was a member of an applied mathematics research team. In his research, he focused on “Random Matrix Theory” and its application in a traffic control. After completion the university, he joined “Business Institute in Prague”. He studied “Strategic Financial Management” (BBA) and focused mainly on a financial analysis of corporations.