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.
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.