Gillmore Centre Webinar Symposium

WBS Gillmore Centre - Digital Currency Dialogues Series

WBS Gillmore Centre Webinar: Fnality, A private sector CBDC? And getting to the truth in FinTech research with CBDC Case Studies.

You are invited to join Martin Walker and Rhomaios Ram online to discuss Fintech Research and CBDC.

Agenda

14:00-14:45 Rhomaios Ram (CEO Fnality International) - A private sector CBDC?

14:45-15:30 Martin C. W. Walker (Banking and Finance Director, Centre for Evidence-Based Management) - Getting to the Truth in Fintech Research, with CBDC Case Studies.

Rhomaios Ram, CEO, Fnality International "A Private Sector CBDC?"

For years, the transformative potential of blockchain, distributed ledger technology (DLT), and smart contracts in revolutionizing financial markets has been a topic of extensive discussion. Enter Fnality, an international consortium comprising global banks, market infrastructures, and buy-side firms with a focused mission - to pioneer a blockchain-based wholesale payment and settlement system anchored in tokenized central bank money.

Anticipating approval for their first set of omnibus accounts with key central banks in 2023-24, Fnality may be on the verge of launching its planned DLT-based payments system. But what sets Fnality apart from alternative schemes like private stablecoins or public central bank digital currencies (CBDCs)? What problems is Fnality trying to solve, and how might its product and vision stand to (re)shape the financial markets of tomorrow?

Join us for an engaging conversation with Fnality International's CEO Rhomaios Ram as we unravel the intricacies of Fnality's groundbreaking approach:

Introduction to Fnality: a developer of Private Sector CBDC
Why is this needed?
History & Progress to date
How does it work?
Why Blockchain?
Why not Public Blockchain?
Beyond Payments: The Future for Tokenised Assets in Traditional Markets

Martin C.W. Walker Banking & Finance Director, Centre for Evidence-Based Management. - "Getting to the Truth in Fintech Research, with CBDC Case Studies"

Join us for an enlightening conversation with finance and technology practitioner and researcher Martin Walker to explore some of the great opportunities and inherent challenges in doing Fintech and CBDC-related research, including:

The cross-disciplinary nature of the topic
Availability of evidence that is of sufficient quality and completeness to draw conclusions
Commercial and career incentives to produce "research" that is essentially marketing material
Research quality as a barrier to innovation
Techniques for drawing more evidence-based conclusions

With

Rhomaios Ram (CEO Fnality International)

Rhom is the CEO of Fnality International, a company developing a global network of decentralised Financial Market Infrastructures (dFMIs) to deliver the means of payment for tomorrow's wholesale banking markets. The goal is to bring the innovation of DeFi to traditional financial markets enabling the free flow of money. A former Banking Executive with 22+ years of experience, including most recently Global Head of Product Management for Transaction Banking at Deutsche Bank, Rhom has developed an interest in creating digital businesses for finance and finance related areas. He brings experience of working across a wide variety of wholesale banking businesses and functions including sales, trading, product management, and technology to his role at Fnality. The majority of his experience has been developing businesses where the product is at the intersection of finance and technology

Martin Walker (Banking & Finance Director - Center for Evidence-Based Management) -

Martin Walker is director for banking and finance at the Center for Evidence-Based Management. His background in capital markets is "front-to-back", and includes IT and change experience in front office and operations across multiple business lines such as securities finance, foreign exchange (forex), derivatives and prime brokerage. Roles in capital markets IT have included global head of securities finance and treasury IT at Dresdner Kleinwort, global head of prime brokerage technology at RBS Markets and lead business analyst in Equities Finance IT at Merrill Lynch.

In the post-trade area, Walker has designed systems to identify costs, cost drivers and change opportunities, as well as new operating models and business processes for post-trade forex and derivatives for HSBC. More recently, he has worked on product development at the R3 blockchain consortium.

As both a practitioner and researcher, Walker has had multiple papers and articles published on areas such fintech, blockchain, cryptocurrencies and securities finance, and his work has been mentioned in the press. In 2018, he was called as an expert witness by the UK House of Commons Treasury Committee to give evidence on cryptocurrencies and the application of distributed ledger technology in banking. Walker received a BSc in economics from the London School of Economics, an MSc in computing science from Imperial College, London, and is a fellow of the Center for Evidence-Based Management.