Marcel Haag studied law at the universities of Freiburg, Bonn, Strasbourg and at the EUI in Florence and qualified as a judge in Düsseldorf. After a short stint in business, he joined the European Commission and worked in different Commission services. Until the summer of 2020 Mr Haag served as a Director for policy coordination in the Secretariat-General of the Commission. He is currently Director for Horizontal policies at the Directorate-General for Financial Stability, Financial Services and Capital Markets Union.

Laura joined the office for economic policy and international affairs (GPEARI) of the Ministry of Finance in November 2020, in order to participate in the Portuguese Presidency of the European Council. She is currently in GPEARI, serving as head of the Financial Services Division.
Laura coordinates a team that has as two major workstreams: the negotiations of all financial services legislation at the European Council level and the preparation of several international meetings such as ECOFIN and Economic and Financial Committee (EFC). She represents Portugal in several international fora such as the Financial Securities Committee (FSC), the OECD’s Financial Markets Committee, the Financial Stability Board Regional Committee, and the European Commission’s Member States Expert Group for Sustainable Finance.
Laura has a law degree by the law school of Lisbon University.

She is the Head of the Payment Systems Department at Banco de Portugal, which is responsible for the oversight, regulation, operation and development of the Portuguese payments market.
She has been involved in the operational and regulatory developments taking place in the field of payment systems, such as the migration towards the Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA), the transposition and implementation of the revised Payment Services Directive, the deployment of instant payment solutions and other innovative payment services, and the investigation on the possible issuance of the digital euro.
She is also a member of the Market Infrastructures Board (MIB), the Eurosystem body in charge of the operation and management of Eurosystem market infrastructures such as TARGET services, and she represents Banco de Portugal in several other fora.

Named one of the ‘2021 Top Ten Voices in European Fintech’ Conny Dorrestijn has a focused career in innovation for the international financial technology sector, previously at Clear2Pay/FIS and as Founding Partner/Advisor at BankiFi: a developer of technology ‘putting banks at the heart of business’. She is also Chair of the Supervisory Board at Blanco Services, a Non-Executive Director to the Board of Augmentum Fintech, an Associate of the Digital Insurance Agenda (DIA) and a Global Innovation Awards Judge at BAI (US). She is a co-host/producer of the regular Fintech Cappuccino podcast.

Beju Shah is Head of Nordics for the Bank for International Settlements' (BIS) Innovation Hub. He leads a team of experts in cybersecurity, payments, artificial intelligence, and central bank digital currencies (CBDC) to deliver trail-blazing work and insights on technology to the global central bank community and policy makers. Before the BIS, Beju was at the Bank of England for 10 years in several roles, leading on large data, digital and business transformation programmes as well as many international initiatives.

Co-founder of Banking Circle and Chief Executive Officer of Banking Circle Group, Anders la Cour previously worked as a technology and financial M&A lawyer at a tier one law firm in Copenhagen.

Anders was a top graduate from the University Master of Laws in Denmark, and was admitted to the Bar in 2008. His experience in legal M&A, as well as in venture capital, coupled with his strong commercial acumen and entrepreneurial mind-set means Anders understands the financial tech industry. In identifying a flaw in how the FinTech sector is serviced by the banks, he has seized the opportunity to bring a solution to market that will be a serious game-changer and challenger to the status quo.

Anders is responsible for the day to day management of Banking Circle Group as well as investor relations.

“Because FinTechs have been, rightly, focused on improving the customer’s user experience, the banking side of the equation hasn’t been addressed to the same degree. This means they haven’t had the ability to offer international bank transfers that match their ‘no barriers’ ambitions. That’s where Banking Circle comes in.”