Our Team

Finastra Representative

Ben Abbassi

Managing Director, Large Enterprises, NA & EMEA

Ben Abbassi is a senior executive in Payments with experience in leading global teams that drive value creation and transform business operations. His track record covers Large Banks, Financial Intermediaries and Retailers across EMEA and North America.

Prior to joining Finastra, Ben Abbassi spent more than 10 years with ACI Worldwide where he held executive positions as Global Head of Services and Head of Sales Europe.

Eyal Altaras

Director, Solution Consulting, Lending

Eyal Altaras leads the global solution consulting team for lending at Finastra. He is a subject matter expert in loan trading and settlement. Eyal has been with Finastra for 23 years and was one of the original designers for the market leading Fusion Loan IQ. Additionally, he has expertise in trading, P&L, accounting mapping and regulatory compliance. Prior to Finastra he held roles in the lending businesses at financial institutions including Citibank. Eyal holds an MBA in finance from the City University of New York.

Francisco Bezerra de Oliveira Neto

Solutions Consulting Lead, Treasury and Capital Markets

Francisco Bezerra de Oliveira Neto is a Financial Risk Manager (FRM®) certified and part of the Global Solution Consultant team at Finastra for its Treasury and Risk Management business. With over 20 years’ experience in the financial services industry and a special focus within ALM, Market Risk and Credit Risk. He holds a degree in Mathematics and specializations on Capital Markets and Risk Management.

Gareth Johnson

Senior Director, Product Management, Marketplaces

Gareth is a Product Director in Finastra’s Financial Messaging Marketplaces business unit, located in London, UK with responsibility for the Fusion Total Messaging platform and related products which provide connectivity and workflow control for SWIFT and other market infrastructures and payment networks.

He has over 20 years’ experience with Financial Messaging and Cloud/SaaS services through management roles in Product, R&D and Service Bureau operations at Finastra, D+H, Fundtech and BankServ.

Arun Kini

Managing Director, Payments, APAC

Arun Kini is the APAC Managing Director of Finastra’s Payments business, where he leads the development and execution of the firm’s broad suite of integrated payment solutions to help banks modernize and future-proof their payments infrastructure.

Arun brings with him over 25 years of experience in the Financial Services and Software Industry, with strong domain expertise in transaction banking, payments and revenue management. With a strong track record across various roles in product, pre-sales and sales across the Asia Pacific region, Arun has played pivotal roles in the uptake of payment and cash management products by global brands and clients.

Before returning to Finastra in 2022 as Regional Sales Director, Payments, APAC, Arun was with SunTec Business Solutions leading the Client Facing Group for Asia Pacific.

Kirsten Lemke

Managing Director, Payments, Americas

At Finastra, Kirsten Lemke is Managing Director of Payments in the Americas where she is focused on providing high value, immediate and mass payments for banks to deliver to their corporate and retail clients.   

Over the past 30+ years she has worked for organizations such as Deluxe Corporation, Bottomline Technologies, FIS and Kyriba to provide payment modernization solutions for corporates and banks of all sizes.    

Kirsten is passionate about developing women and volunteers with Menttium Corporation to mentor women to advance their professional careers and with Women Venture to help women launch their business concepts. 

Iain MacLennan

VP Trade & Supply Chain Finance, Corporate Banking

As Vice President and General Manager for Trade & Supply Chain Finance, Iain is responsible for the strategic roadmap and delivery of these products for Finastra, he has responsibility for both the Product and Engineering groups. In addition, Iain leads Finastra’s engagement with the International Chamber of Commerce on ICC TradeComm, a financial marketplace that is being launched in early 2023 in Latin America, and then globally.

Iain joined Finastra in January 2019, from Lloyds Banking Group where he spent 6 years in several leadership roles in Technology and Group Transformation supporting the Commercial Bank. He was most recently the Engineering Lead within the Commercial Servicing Lab delivering Agile change (Digital, Process and Fulfilment) improving the overall Customer and Colleague Experience across all sectors.

Prior to Lloyds Iain held Change and Technology roles with Barclays, Deutsche Bank, ING Barings and Swiss Bank Corporation, primarily in Global Transaction Banking. He has over 25 years’ experience in delivering technology enabled change within the Financial Services industry. Iain holds a Ph.D. and a B.Eng from the University of Glasgow, plus a MBA from Henley Business School.

Roy Marsh

Global Payments Director

Roy initially worked for NatWest and Toronto Dominion covering a range of Retail and International banking business. His experience covers Correspondent Banking, International Payments Products and Payments Operations. Roy is a qualified ACIB.

Roy has worked for the specialist Payments business at Finastra for nine years principally advising Finastra’s global strategic clients on their Domestic and International Payments functions.

From 1996 - 2010 Roy was based in Singapore as MD APAC for three suppliers to the banking industry. Immediately prior to Finastra he worked for IBM Middle East based in Abu Dhabi for two years.

Jim McMahon

VP, Americas Enterprise Sales & Strategic Accounts, Lending

Jim is a seasoned financial services and technology executive with over 25 years of industry experience.

As Head of Distribution for Finastra's Corporate Lending Solution suite & Strategic Partnerships in the Americas, he is at the forefront of driving growth and innovation in the region.

Additionally, Jim plays a crucial role as the head of global Strategic Accounts, fostering strong relationships with key clients worldwide.

Jim is focused on advancing Finastra’s mission of driving growth and open innovation through collaboration with financial institutions, fintech’s and enterprise corporations.

Jim is based out of the Greater Boston, Massachusetts area.

Michael Mercer

Senior Sales Executive , Payments

Jonathan Power

VP, Europe Sales & Partner Management, Corporate Lending

Jonathan and his team are responsible for driving sales and account strategy for the Europe region, nurturing, and strengthening our partner ecosystem in the region.

Jonathan brings over 20 years of experience in the fintech industry, in roles covering consulting, professional services, pre-sales, sales, sales leadership and P&L management. These positions have seen Jonathan work in the Middle East, Asia Pacific, continental Europe and the UK.

Most recently, Jonathan was Head of Sales, Europe for Backbase, the leading provider of digital / engagement banking solutions for retail, business and wealth management.

He previously led the European business for Temenos, focusing on core banking and has also been involved in sales covering payments, asset finance / leasing and credit risk / decisioning. Jonathan also spent 9 years at Misys in pre-sales and business development, working in Singapore and Paris where he ran European Solutions Consulting.
In his spare time, Jonathan enjoys supporting the sporting endeavors of his three children who play lacrosse, rugby and netball whilst enjoying the occasional game of golf.

Amelia Ruiz Heras

Senior Director, Solutions Sales, Global Sales

Amelia is a Senior Director at Finastra with over 20 years’ experience in the payments industry and leads the global Solution Consulting organization for Finastra’s Payments business.

Amelia and her team design and develop solutions to help clients respond to business and regulatory requirements in the bank-to-bank payments ecosystems while enabling their payments modernization and transformation journeys. As an industry leader in cloud-native solutions, Amelia also helps drive payment innovation at Finastra.

Amelia is equally passionate about her clients' success as she is about Payments.

Tyson Sinclair

Strategic Sales Executive

Merten Slominsky

Vice President, Sales Europe, Middle East & Africa, Payments

Merten is responsible for all direct and indirect software and services sales for our Payments products in Europe, Middle East & Africa, closely cooperating with our global partner management to leverage sales across the region. He joined Finastra in 2020, was originally responsible for Finastra’s sales activities in Central & Eastern Europe for our complete product range. In June 2021 his portfolio was expanded to also include Southern Europe.

He is excited about our future-oriented approach to Open Banking, Banking-as-a-Service, Platform and Cloud offerings and sees enormous potential in the Financial Software Market, especially for our Payments solutions.

Merten brings over 25 years of experience in leadership, sales & services management, business development and strategy development and execution for international software companies. Prior to Finastra, he was General Manager and VP at the Business Intelligence company MicroStrategy, where he developed and grew the company's business and its partnerships with resellers and system integrators. Previous leadership positions include VP EMEA at open source and cloud software vendor Alfresco and Enterprise VP at Lexmark and Kofax, a leading Capture and Robotics Process Automation vendor. Merten also led for 7 years at IBM Software Group, where he managed NorthWest Europe for the ECM Business Unit post the Filenet acquisition.

Merten studied Economics at the University of Duisburg-Essen and did his Master Degree in Utrecht, Netherlands. He likes to spend time in Germany and Spain, enjoying all sorts of water sports. He lives with his wife Nicola and their two adult children near Düsseldorf, Germany.

Carlos Teixeira

Global Head, Business Strategy, Lending

As the Senior Industry Principal at Finastra, Carlos’ prime focus is on enabling our corporate banking clients to achieve the next phase of their transformation. He provides executive advisory regarding market trends and technology transformation across all areas of corporate banking on a global basis.

With more than 25 years of experience in transaction banking, Carlos has spent over a decade with major European banks in their transaction banking divisions. Since joining Finastra in 2005, Carlos has held roles with responsibility for driving successful trade services implementations across India, the Middle-East and Africa as well as providing technology and business insights on digital solutions.

He has a keen interest in cutting-edge developments across platform modernization, AI / Machine Learning, and blockchain to understand what these capabilities will help to deliver in terms of sustainable finance models, and how clients can cost-effectively adopt these technologies into their models.

Finastra Leadership Team

Sylvie Boucheron-Saunier

Chief Revenue Officer, Payments

Sylvie Boucheron-Saunier is the global Chief Revenue Officer for Finastra’s Payments organization.

An experienced senior executive with a knack for recruiting and coaching top talents around the world to drive accelerated revenue growth. She has a strong technology background and deep knowledge of the financial services & payments industry, from various perspectives – successively worked for a bank, a card vendor, a processor & merchant acquirer, and software providers.

Sylvie joined Finastra from real-time payments solutions company ACI Worldwide where she has been for ten years holding a variety of leadership roles; showcasing strengths in rebuilding regions that had been neglected, diverse and highly complex. Sylvie is a strong advocate for the leadership and growth of women in the payments industry and continually looks for ways to provide mentorship, empower, while seeking inclusion and diversity in all roles. She is also passionate about giving back and helping to reduce poverty and inequalities particularly in Africa where she gives her time to NanoBNK, a FinTech offering digital banking solutions for unbanked populations in Africa, as well as a Board Member of the Anglo-African Group, present in several countries in Africa.

Sylvie has traveled the world and hold various degrees from her native country of France. She currently resides in Naples, FL where she pursues her passion of art and music. In her spare time, she enjoys visiting art exhibitions and going to rock concerts.

Lekshmi Nair

CRO Corporate Lending & Global Head of Strategic Accounts

Lekshmi and her team are responsible for all revenue generation and retention activities for the Corporate Lending Business Unit as well as for driving the account strategy across Finastra’s most strategic accounts, nurturing and expanding existing partnerships.

Lekshmi brings over two decades of experience in the financial services industry and has worked across the design, development, implementation and sales of banking and trading platforms. Lekshmi has a deep understanding of our clients and the markets we serve and has been instrumental in instituting the operating model for Finastra’s Global & Strategic Accounts portfolio.

Prior to joining Finastra, Lekshmi worked in investment banking, starting her career at Barclays and moving to CIBC.

Simon Paris

Chief Executive Officer

Simon takes responsibility for Finastra’s strategic direction and growth. His leadership steers the company as it becomes the world’s leading ecosystem orchestrator for providers and consumers of financial services everywhere. With this clear strategic intent, he champions the company’s core technology solutions and open development platform in accelerating collaboration and innovation, to unlock the potential of people, businesses and communities.

A firm believer in the principles of doing well by doing good, Simon chairs the World Trade Board and is passionate about how technology and open trade can drive financial inclusion and improve people’s lives. He also serves on the Board of Directors for Everbridge, a critical event management (CEM) software company, and on the Board of Directors for Thomson Reuters.

An inspiring and trusted fintech thought leader, Simon speaks regularly at large-scale events including the annual World Trade Symposium, Paris FinTech Forum and The Milken Asia Summit. He is a strong advocate for diversity and inclusion, with refreshing and candid views on equality in the workplace. Featuring in Bank Innovation’s ‘Innovators to Watch’ list back in 2018, Simon has since been named a top 50 financial technology CEO by The Financial Technology Report two years running, as well as a top 20 CEO in Europe by the Software Report. He was also recognized in the CEO Today Awards 2021.

Simon joined Finastra (formerly Misys) as President in 2015, was appointed Deputy Chief Executive Officer in 2017 and became Chief Executive Officer in June 2018. He brings more than 25 years of sales, management and global leadership expertise to the company, having previously held the role of President, Industry Cloud, at SAP. Prior to that he was a senior consultant with McKinsey & Company.
A firm believer in the principles of doing well by doing good, Simon chairs the World Trade Board and is passionate about how technology and open trade can drive financial inclusion and improve people’s lives. He also serves on the Board of Directors for Everbridge, a critical event management (CEM) software company, and on the Board of Directors for Thomson Reuters.

An inspiring and trusted fintech thought leader, Simon speaks regularly at large-scale events including the annual World Trade Symposium, Paris FinTech Forum and The Milken Asia Summit. He is a strong advocate for diversity and inclusion, with refreshing and candid views on equality in the workplace. Featuring in Bank Innovation’s ‘Innovators to Watch’ list back in 2018, Simon has since been named a top 50 financial technology CEO by The Financial Technology Report two years running, as well as a top 20 CEO in Europe by the Software Report. He was also recognized in the CEO Today Awards 2021.

Simon joined Finastra (formerly Misys) as President in 2015, was appointed Deputy Chief Executive Officer in 2017 and became Chief Executive Officer in June 2018. He brings more than 25 years of sales, management and global leadership expertise to the company, having previously held the role of President, Industry Cloud, at SAP. Prior to that he was a senior consultant with McKinsey & Company.

Barry Rodrigues

EVP Payments

Barry is responsible for Finastra’s payments organization.

An experienced senior leader, he has a compelling track record of working in both early stage and growth businesses, spanning digital banking, credit cards, buy now pay later, merchant acquiring, corporate/virtual cards and networks.

Barry has built his 35-year career in financial services around the world in leading companies. Most recently he was a Senior Advisor at Boston Consulting Group. Prior to that, he was Chief Executive Officer at Barclays Cards and Payments where he oversaw the digital banks and credit card divisions in the US and Germany, as well as merchant acquiring, corporate card and point of sale businesses in the UK. He brings deep payments knowledge and strong leadership expertise to his role at Finastra.

Previously, Barry oversaw all payments products for Citibank on the consumer side of the business, where he and his team enabled first of its kind digital payment solutions. He also spent 25 years in payments-focused leadership roles at American Express. These include EVP and GM of American Express Bank UK (corporate banking, treasury, private banking and correspondent banking), GM of the Merchant Acquiring business in Asia, and President of Amex Global Network Services.
An experienced senior leader, he has a compelling track record of working in both early stage and growth businesses, spanning digital banking, credit cards, buy now pay later, merchant acquiring, corporate/virtual cards and networks.

Barry has built his 35-year career in financial services around the world in leading companies. Most recently he was a Senior Advisor at Boston Consulting Group. Prior to that, he was Chief Executive Officer at Barclays Cards and Payments where he oversaw the digital banks and credit card divisions in the US and Germany, as well as merchant acquiring, corporate card and point of sale businesses in the UK. He brings deep payments knowledge and strong leadership expertise to his role at Finastra.

Previously, Barry oversaw all payments products for Citibank on the consumer side of the business, where he and his team enabled first of its kind digital payment solutions. He also spent 25 years in payments-focused leadership roles at American Express. These include EVP and GM of American Express Bank UK (corporate banking, treasury, private banking and correspondent banking), GM of the Merchant Acquiring business in Asia, and President of Amex Global Network Services.

Barry holds a Bachelor’s degree in Accounting from London Guildhall University, as well as an MBA from George Washington University.

Radha Suvarna

Chief Growth Officer and Head of BaaS and Embedded Finance

A Product and Business leader with over 27 years of diversified experience across Payments, Cards, and Consumer Lending for Consumer and Commercial client segments. Built and transformed various functions and businesses across multiple geographies including U.S. and Asia.

Currently the Head and Chief Product Officer responsible for end-to-end build-out of the BaaS/Embedded Finance business and Payments value-added-services (VAS) at Finastra with primary focus around payments and lending, with overall responsibility for Go-to-market, Product, and Engineering teams. Prior to this, Radha was the EVP/Head of Enterprise Payments for Citizens bank, with responsibility for Enterprise Payment platforms, Consumer payment products, Treasury payments strategy, and Payments innovation. During this time, Radha was the Chair of Secure Token Exchange board at The Clearing House (TCH).

Before joining Citizens, Radha spent over 20 years at Citi. He was the head of Digital Payments & Lending for US Consumer bank at Citigroup, with responsibilities for end-to-end mobile/ web products for money movement, digital commerce, unsecured loans, and associated industry partnerships with big-tech and fintechs. Radha held number of diversified roles prior to that, including P&L ownership for Credit Cards/Loans/Merchant Acquiring portfolio for Citibank Singapore, Citi Asia Network relationship lead with Visa/ MC, and Credit Risk Manager at Citibank US.

PR

James McKenna

Senior PR Manager, Americas

Sofia Romano

Head of PR, EMEA

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