Catherine Zhou will share the Fintech innovation trends, implications for financial services industry and examples of HSBC’s case examples.

Ioana Surpateanu will share a succinct analysis of decentralised finance (DeFi) trends and the birth of an ecosystem that challenges centralised corporate structures in favour of peer-to-peer interactions.

Speaker

Catherine Zhou is currently Global Head of Venture, Digital Innovation & Partnerships at HSBC where she is leading bank-wide approach to uncover new profit pools, alternative business models and leading changes.

Prior to this role, Catherine ran the Consumer Bank for East West Bank and led the efforts to build an entirely new stack of digital capabilities from ground up. She led the build of a cross boarder straight through digital onboarding capability which became the bank’s new organic growth engine. Her earlier career spans from Accenture, PwC, Ernst & Young working with Media, Technology and Retail clients from front office to back office.

Catherine holds an MBA from Carnegie Mellon University, Master of Engineering and Bachelor of Engineering from University of Science and Technology Beijing.

Speaker

Ioana Surpateanu is Chief Strategy Officer at DIA
Association and Principal for DIALabs, a vehicle designed to
support the DeFi ecosystem development, empower
women in emerging tech and enable partnerships with
entities on the traditional side of the spectrum as well as
regulators and policymakers.

She is also an Executive Board member of the Multichain
Asset Managers Association ( MAMA), a global community
of organisations working to transform asset management
through blockchain technology.

Prior to joining DIA, Ioana was Co-Head of European Gov’t
Affairs and Innovation Strategy lead for Citi, where she
coordinated the policymaker interaction on emerging tech
and crypto. In addition, she seconded into Citi’s markets
infrastructure investments team to work on FinTech
investments.

In parallel, she was Vice-chair of the European Parliament
Outreach Task Force in AmCham EU. In that capacity, she
led the EU Institutions outreach strategy with focus on high-profile political leaders throughout Europe.
She joined Citi from the European Parliament where she was Head of Cabinet for the VP of the European
People’s Party (EPP) Group and senior adviser on issues related to the digital single market (DSM), EU
budget and the inception of the European fund for strategic investments (EFSI)

Ioana holds two master’s degrees on politics, economics and international relations from the University of
Tel Aviv and University of Bucharest. She appears on Innovate Finance’s WIF Powerlist and was shortlisted
for the WIBF Tech Star Award. She is a competitive skier, occasional Kart racer and Formula One aficionado.