Keynote speakers

Dirk Niepelt is professor of macroeconomics at the University of Bern and leader of the CEPR Research and Policy Network on FinTech and Digital Currencies. He is a research fellow at the Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR, London); fellow at SUERF—The European Money and Finance Forum; CESifo (Munich) research network member; and member of the macroeconomic committee of the Verein für Socialpolitik. He is also a member of the Bank of England‘s CBDC Academic Advisory Group and serves on the Foundation Council of Zukunft.li.

His research and teaching covers topics in macroeconomics, monetary economics, international finance, and public finance, and he frequently contributes to the public debate. He is the author of the MIT Press textbook “Macroeconomic Analysis”.

Dirk Niepelt received his PhD in economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and he holds licentiate and doctorate degrees from the University of St. Gallen.

Myles Stephenson is Chief Executive & Founder of Modulr, a leading payments automation platform operating in the UK, Europe, and USA. He began his career in the retail sector with Marks & Spencer, before moving into the payments industry to hold operational and strategic leadership roles at Retail Decisions, leading CorporatePay as Founder & CEO, and WEX Inc in Europe as Managing Director.

A serial Fintech entrepreneur with an extensive payments background, Myles built ventures at Retail Decisions including Mi-Pay and Digital Payments. He then founded and led CorporatePay, and went on to found Modulr in 2016 following the exiting of CorporatePay to WEX Inc.

Myles serves as Co-Chair of the External Advisory Board, Edinburgh Centre for Financial Innovations, at the University of Edinburgh Business School. He is also an Export Champion for the UK’s Department for Business & Trade. Myles earned his MA in Biochemistry at Christ Church, Oxford University, which included research at Padova University, Italy.

Modulr is the payments automation platform that streamlines money movement with accuracy, control and reliability – built to scale. Processing over 200mn transactions and £180bn in annualised payment value, Modulr is trusted by more than 6,000 businesses to automate payment and reconciliation workflows – removing manual work, lowering costs and reducing errors.

David Stallibrass is Deputy Chief Economist at the FCA responsible for: strategic economic analysis across consumer and wholesale markets, behavioural economics and data science, and for the commissioning and delivery of their series of Occasional Papers. He has a particular responsibility for the economics of Growth and Risk.

David previously worked at Fingleton, advising leaders of significant international firms on their regulatory strategies. Experience prior to Fingleton includes being the first expert economist to provide testimony at the Supreme Peoples Court of China, acting as the Special Advisor to the Chair of the Egyptian Competition Authority while at First Principles Economics, and as a Director at the UK Office of Fair Trading responsible for consumer protection and competition enforcement in the health and professional services industries.