Labuan IBFC is pleased to announce that its annual conference, Connecting Digital Ecosystems (CoDE) Asia, will be held on Thursday, 21 October 2021.
Growing into its third edition, CoDE Asia 2021 is themed "Future Forward: Next Gen Digital Ecosystems”, as it continues to focus on current and emerging developments in the digital finance industry as well as its surrounding ecosystems.
Register now to gain complimentary access to the virtual conference on Thursday, 21 October 2021 at 3.00PM (GMT +8).
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Nik Mohamed Din Nik Musa
Mr. Nik Mohamed Din is the Director General of Labuan FSA. Prior to his appointment, Mr. Nik Mohamed Din was the Director of Money Services Business Regulation, Bank Negara Malaysia (BNM) since 2016.
At his previous post, he was responsible for the regulation, supervision, policy-making and development of cross-border remittance, currency exchange and currency wholesale business in Malaysia. He joined BNM in 1991 and had served in various areas within the Central Bank, including bank regulation, Islamic banking and takaful as well as market development of international finance of the Labuan IBFC.
Mr. Nik Mohamed Din is the Vice Chairman of International Islamic Financial Market (IIFM). He is also Chairman of the Financial Stability Committee of Labuan FSA and a board of director of Financial Park (Labuan) Sdn Bhd.
Besides holding a Chartered Banker certificate from the Asian Institute of Chartered Bankers, Mr. Nik Mohamed Din holds a Bachelor of Science in Economics and Accounting from the University of Bristol and a Master’s degree in Business Administration from the University of Warwick. -
Anson Zeall
Anson is the Chairman of ACCESS, Singapore’s Cryptocurrency and Blockchain Industry Association (access-sg.org), one of Asia’s most influential blockchain associations in the world. He is also the executive director of IDAXA (idaxa.org), the global voice for the world’s virtual asset associations and service providers, formed during the 2019 G20 Summit.
Under IDAXA, Anson launched the openvasp.org initiative and the Joint Working Group to form the InterVASP Messaging Standard to compy with FATF’s travel rule. In 2020, Anson was appointed to the OECD’s Blockchain Expert Policy Advisory Board (BEPAB). He is also an entrepreneur in the blockchain space, including Zeall and Company (zeallnco.com), TZA, Merkle Trees, and CoinPip. Anson is an alumnus of the University of New South Wales and Columbia Business School. -
Anthony Gajor
Anthony Gajor is a dual citizen of the United States and St. Kitts & Nevis with nearly a decade of experience in marketing, banking, business development, and corporate finance. He started his career as a successful Benefits Consultant and Licensed Health Insurance Agent at Aflac, one of the largest insurance companies in the United States. He was the former Business Development Manager of a leading St. Kitts & Nevis fintech firm where he oversaw client relationships, business development, and executive management.
As an executive member of the Government Policy Group at Hamilton Reserve Bank, Anthony advises the Bank on government policies. He is a board member of the Nevis Historical and Conservation Society, which is the Trustee of the world-renowned Alexander Hamilton Museum. He is also a board member of Fintech Bank Ltd, a duly licensed commercial bank headquartered in Malaysia. Anthony graduated from the University of New Haven with a Bachelor of Science degree in Business Management and a minor in Accounting. -
Cecilia Chan
Cecilia Chan is the head of Broctagon Prime Markets Limited which is licensed by Labuan FSA as a money broker and a part of the Broctagon Fintech Group. She expanded her remit to operate the NEXUS WorldBook™ and Exchange-of-Exchange (EoE) – the world’s first Crypto Liquidity Provider.
Cecilia was also instrumental in the growth of the dealing desk in Phillip Futures Malaysia where she laid the groundwork as Head of Dealing, before moving on to Maybank Investment Bank as the Head of Dealing in futures broking and then Head of Futures with Kim Eng Futures Hong Kong. -
Chia Hock Lai
Chia Hock Lai is the CEO of Switchnovate, a FinTech consultancy firm that provides financial blockchain solutions, and has close to 2 decades of experience in the financial and technology industry. He has previously worked in organisations like Government Technology Agency of Singapore (GovTech) and NTUC Income. He is also an alumnus of the National University of Singapore (NUS) and Nanyang Technological University (NTU).
Besides being the Co-Chairman of Blockchain Association Singapore, he is also a Fellow of the Singapore University of Social Science, member of the Banking & Finance and Fund Industry panel of Nanyang Polytechnic, member of the Technology sub-group under the IBF Technology & Operations (T&O) Industry Workgroup, and advisor to start-ups. -
Farah Jaafar
Farah is the Chief Executive Officer of Labuan IBFC Incorporated, a wholly owned subsidiary of Labuan Financial Services Authority, the statutory Regulatory Authority for Labuan International Business and Financial Centre, operating under the purview of Ministry of Finance, Malaysia. Labuan IBFC Incorporated serves as the jurisdiction’s official market development agency.
A seasoned strategic communication, market development and financial services professional, she brings with her experience spanning more than 25 years in wholesale financial services, putting her in good stead to develop Labuan IBFC as Asia’s go-to mid-shore wholesale financial intermediation centre.
Formerly attached to the Asian Institute of Finance and Bursa Malaysia (Malaysia’s national stock exchange), Farah has served in numerous senior market development and strategic communications roles.
She has also represented the Association of Stock Broking Companies Malaysia, a nationwide industry led lobby group representing Malaysian stockbrokers during the demutualisation exercise of the national exchange, allowing her a unique hands-on experience surrounding high strategic level issues relating to multiple stakeholder management, eco-system curation and long-term strategic business strategy.
Passionate about equality, financial inclusion and win-win partnerships, she strongly believes that “a rising tide lifts all boats”. Farah has an LLB (Hons) from Sheffield University, United Kingdom. -
Jean-Yves Sireau
Jean-Yves Sireau is the CEO and founder of Deriv.com, which is a leading online trading platform that aims to make trading accessible to anyone, anywhere.
Sireau started his first company in 1991, where he developed financial software for the French brokerage community and received prizes for young entrepreneurs from Nicolas Sarkozy and Edith Cresson, former President and Prime Minister of France, for his company Excellence Informatique SARL in 1991. He moved to Hong Kong the following year to work as a money market dealer with Crédit Commercial de France (now HSBC).
In 1993, he founded his own Hong Kong-based investment fund, Fortitude Group Inc. that specialised in dealing futures and options on the Hong Kong Futures Exchange.
Sireau disrupted the industry in 1999 with the systems and algorithms he created to launch the patented technology we still see at Deriv today. His aim was to make trading accessible to retail clients and not just big banks and hedge funds.
Deriv has become a market leader in the fintech industry and now offers a wide range of CFDs and other derivative contracts on FX, stock indices, and synthetic indices to over a million clients worldwide. Now a global company, Deriv Group Ltd has over 600 employees across 10 offices worldwide. -
Karen Puah
Karen Puah is the President of the Fintech Association of Malaysia. With over 20 years of advertising and marketing experience in FMCG, Karen has recently found new love in the fintech space. What caught her attention was the potential in Islamic finance. She believes that content is the future of marketing and brings hope in the field of digital marketing to this industry. When she is not busy participating in obstacle races, you will find her strategising the next campaign.
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Mohammad Ridzuan Abdul Aziz
Mohammad Ridzuan Abdul Aziz has over 20 years of commercially–driven regulatory, compliance and technology experiences in Asia-Pacific. He is currently the Malaysia Country Director and Head of ASEAN Business for WorldRemit, and on the board of KAF Investment Bank, AKRU robo-advisory and Ethis Global Ventures. He is a member of the board advisor for the Fintech Association of Malaysia where among others, focuses on raising Malaysia’s unique combined values of mature on-shore eco-system, nimble Labuan mid-shore framework and wealth of depth & breath from Islamic Digital Economy – for inbound, passthrough and outbound stakeholders.
In 2013 and 2016, Ridzuan founded regulatory technology advisory firms – RHT Compliance Solutions and CS Technology Solutions Sdn Bhd, respectively. In 2017, Ridzuan was the CEO of Sedania As Salam Capital Sdn Bhd. He was a regulator with the Kuala Lumpur Stock Exchange (1998) during the Asia financial crisis, the Securities Commission ((2001) and then redeployed to a joint task force between the Securities Commission and Bank Negara Malaysia during the formation of the investment bank concept (2002). -
Pooja Sinha
Pooja is a corporate finance specialist with the unique ability to advise clients in both the traditional and new age economy. Her traditional experience includes representing corporates, bulge-bracket investment banks, funds and other financial services intermediaries on banking, fund lending, capital markets and debt restructuring transactions. She also has experience of investment fund formations and financial services compliance matters. Her new age experience includes guiding technology-enabled businesses on a range of matters from their regulatory licensing strategy, contractual risk mitigation strategy and fundraising through both the traditional and new age routes.
Having trained at and then qualified in Clifford Chance, London, Pooja relocated to Asia with Linklaters and was thereafter part of O’Melveny’s award-winning Singapore office launch team. Most recently, she was a Partner at a Singapore-based international innovator firm. She has closed 100+ cross-border deals in the US, Europe and Asia in a 20+ year stint that has spanned 4 countries. She has worked on several first-of-its-kind deals and has been a featured lawyer in the Chambers and IFLR lawyer rankings, among others.
Pooja graduated from the National Law School of India University, Bengaluru, India with a B.A.L.L.B. (Hons) and holds a masters in law from the University of Oxford. She is registered as a solicitor in England and Wales. She also holds a number of compliance-related certifications – the International Compliance Association's Advanced Certificate in Governance, Risk and Compliance, the PDPC’s Practitioner Certificate in Personal Data Protection and the CIPP (Asia) and the CIPM certifications from the International Association of Privacy Professionals.
Apart from the above, Pooja holds leadership roles in global, professional associations- She is the Asia Networks Director of the International Women’s Insolvency and Restructuring Confederation (IWIRC) and received the 2018 IWIRC Fetner Award for Outstanding International Contribution by an International Member. She has also been appointed on INSOL’s Technical Committee 2019-2021.
