Speakers - WOA Conf 24

Olena Gryniuk is responsible for the development of the SME Banking Club in the CEE region. Before getting involved in the SME Banking Club activities, Olena was in charge of SME products and sales in Raiffeisen Bank and Eurobank groups.

About SME Banking Club
The SME Banking Club was established by a team of former SME bankers in 2010 as a professional network of bankers to exchange information and experiences in the segments of micro, small and medium-sized businesses. The SME Banking Club organizes regional SME banking conferences and webinars that bring together financial institutions, technology companies, and development finance institutions to share knowledge, spur innovation and promote the growth of SMEs in the region. Moreover, it provides its members with access to detailed analytical market reports and annual studies. SME Banking Club’s main activities are concentrated in Central and Eastern Europe.

Katalin Kauzli is a co-founder of Partner HUB Ltd, the developer of a white label digital invoice management solution for banks. Charlie-India is the core IT platform for the BUPA and OTP eBIZ solutions.

Eleonore Juliane Treu, a German lawyer, is an in-house legal counsel and Director of Trade Finance Week at International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) Austria. Her day-to-day activities include international capacity building, business development and project management in Trade Finance, Letters of Credit, and Bank Guarantees. She is a member of the Legal Committee of the ICC Banking Commission, a member of the ICC Banking Commission Task Force on Digitalisation and Commercialization and a member of the Task force on Bank Guarantees. She frequently travels to the CEE regions to speak on ICC’s priorities, on opportunities for capacity building and on various ICC banking policy agendas. Prior to joining ICC Austria she worked at the “Institute for International Civil and Civil Procedural Law” at the University Leipzig and the Law Department of the “University of Applied Science” in Wiener Neustadt.

Adam worked at the financial epicenter of Europe – City of London, at Santander, where he was in charge of credit products for companies and corporations. In this environment, he got inspired and, thanks to his job in a bank, he knew what problems caused long invoices due dates for SMEs and what opportunities this situation represents. Therefore, he returned to the Czech Republic, where he founded Payment Institution Roger, linking the demand of companies for quick financing of issued invoices and investors who finance invoices. Since its inception, Roger has conducted more than 300,000 investment auctions and has financed over 1 billion EUR.

Marketing Director at fintech PragmaGO, also responsible for branding, employer experience, HR and ESG activities. She has built her 15 years of experience in various industries, always with a strong focus on effective communication as a foundation for business development – building healthy relationships with clients, partners and within the organisation itself.

Serial entrepreneur, investor and startup mentor

Serial entrepreneur with 20+ years of experience ranging from management to business development, sales and marketing. Has grown a few businesses from start-up to millions in annual sales and more than 100 employees through effective business planning, creative sales techniques and innovative marketing.

Demonstrated knowledge of the Fintech international environment and articulation of financial markets at a high level.

Diederick van Thiel is an experienced board member, data-tech investor, and writer
who is recognized as one of Europe’s fintech pioneers. All of his fintech companies
were listed in the European Fintech Fifty, and he was awarded London Fintech CEO
of the Year in 2018. Diederick is the founder and CEO of fintech scale-up
AdviceRobo and AI-boutique E-cology Innovations, and serves as a non-executive
director at the neo-bank Ikano (IKEA) in Sweden, retail analytics scale-up Ikano
Insight and private equity investor Channel Capital in London. He previously served
on the boards of ING Bank and KPN Mobile.

Diederick is driven by a sense of purpose in his work. One of his main purposes is to
support financial inclusion through his AdviceRobo’s AI-credit decision-making
platform. He also serves as the Chairman of the sustainability committee at Ikano
Bank, with a focus on environmental, social, and governance (ESG) issues. Additionally, he is passionate about leveraging data technologies to improve the net-
zero performance of smart buildings.

In his academic pursuits, Diederick’s researches focuses on human-centered AI by
understanding the impact of advanced technologies on the evolution of (neo)
banking. He is appointed visiting professor human-centric AI for risk & marketing
management at the Eindhoven University of Technology and at the Jheronimus
Academy for Data Science.

Boglárka has spent almost 20 years in different areas of Trade Finance, since 2022 she is heading Working Capital Solutions Directorate within K&H Bank, Hungary, focusing on trade finance, factoring, invoice financing and all working capital related solutions to companies from SME to Large Corporates. She is very enthusiastic on his working field and believes in innovative digital solutions. Her long-standing international banking background helps to achieve outstanding results and meaningful customer experience.

Multilingual researcher, investment writer & event moderator, with experience covering ESG and global investment.

Currently serving as Head of Community Engagement at Actum Group, focusing on content strategy, product development, event planning, social media, partnerships, and community building in the private equity value creation space.

Skilled in researching and writing about institutional asset management, private markets (private equity, infrastructure, and private debt), foreign direct investments (FDI) and international trade.

Roger is a specialist innovator with experience in driving open banking strategy, data-driven product innovation and lending transformation programmes across both global corporates & fintech start-ups.

Roger has a background in strategy consultancy, data, analytics & business development across the Retail, SME and Corporate lending sectors with a proven track record of delivering pioneering innovation in some of the worlds largest banking & financial institutions. This includes the delivery of the world’s first live use case of open banking in the UK for lending and the development of ground-breaking new Generative AI solutions for commercial banking.

Roger has experience in driving UK & International open data strategy, policy & standards at a corporate and industry level with his white papers & thought leadership featuring in a number of influential publications. He is an experienced speaker and panellist with strong views on how open banking is simply the beginning of a much wider global trend towards consumer empowerment and the proliferation of open finance, data-driven lending & embedded lending.

In the years 2015-2018, Piotr performed as Vice-President of the Management Board of PKO Faktoring; since 2018, he has been developing the company as President of the Management Board.

At the same time, from 2012 to 2017, he was Vice-President of the Management Board of PKO Leasing, where he was responsible for the areas of risk, operations, and IT.

He has over 20 years of experience in the financial market. It specializes in providing innovations primarily in risk management, IT systems, debt collection, processes, data modeling, and model implementation and management.

Before joining PKO Leasing and PKO Faktoring, Piotr was an advisor to the Risk Management Department at BGŻ Bank and the Head of the Rating Team at Bank BPH, where he was responsible for rating models in the first Basel II implementation project in Poland.

For 12 years, he worked in consulting companies – as a Partner at Ernst & Young, Senior Manager at Deloitte, and Member of the Management Board at PONTInfo. He was responsible for sales and implementation of approximately 100 projects a year.

He also has 3 years of experience in IT companies (including SAS Institute) and 10 years of scientific career, which ended with obtaining a PhD in economics at the Warsaw School of Economics.

Maja is a team leader for back-office systems development at PKO Faktoring with over 5 years of experience in the factoring industry. Since 2018, she has been actively cooperating with IT teams to expand systems. Known for her ability to build database queries and automate processes. Maja manages the team with a view to its development and effectiveness and an approach based on supporting people and creating tools to facilitate everyday work.

Tycjan has hands-on management and supervision experience in credit risk management, ESG/Sustainable Finance as well as the M&A process cycle: from DD to full operational implementation in international and cross-cultural environments: in two of DB’s landmark asset disposal transactions in Europe. Proven track record of achievements in identifying and delivering solutions for a challenging business environment in a variety of management roles across EMEA ranging from risk management, strategy & business development to new business creation. The preferred geographic emphasis is on Emerging Markets with a main focus on CEE. Founding member of the ESG working group at the Bank. Sustainable finance/ESG working groups member (or leadership team) of all relevant finance-linked associations in the country.

Kamila has extensive experience in executing IT and business projects. Skilled in coordinating multiple projects within a Tribe, implementing ERP systems and leading teams to achieve business objectives.