The Speakers

Thomas McMahon has over 30 years of experience in international exchange based commodity and derivative product creation, clearing, trading, and regulatory licensing. Over the past decade, Thom has worked broadly across Asia to bring to the market major international exchange formation and licensing projects in Singapore, Japan, Korea, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Australia, Dubai, India, and recently concluded the licensing and launch of the Singapore Mercantile Exchange in August, 2010, where he served as CEO and Managing Director from April 2009 until June 2011. Thom served as Deputy CEO of ABX, Allocated Bullion Exchange 2012-2013 and member of the Advisory Committee as well as CEO of the UD Trading Group. Prior to this Thom was President and Managing Director, Deputy Chairman of the Hong Kong Mercantile Exchange from April 2007 until April 2009, overseeing the development and implementation of the Hong Kong Mercantile Exchange from the ground up. He has served in various leadership positions at The New York Mercantile Exchange/COMEX from 1983 through 2003.

Dimantha Seneviratne is the Chairman of the Sri Lanka Banks’ Association (Guarantee) Ltd. He is also the current Group CEO/Director of the National Development Bank (NDB). He counts more than 28 years of experience in banking industry.  Prior to joining NDB in 2017, he was the Director/CEO of the Pan Asia Banking Corporation PLC (PABC) for 3 years, and was instrumental in turning around PABC and transforming it into a high performing mid-sized player in the industry. Before PABC, he spent 15 years at HSBC Group, where he held key senior management positions including overseas postings covering Thailand, Bangladesh and Saudi Arabia. There, he was responsible for credit growth, strategy and governance in those respective geographies as a member of the country leadership team. He gained extensive exposure in Retail and Corporate Banking, Wealth Management, Credit and Market Risk Management, Operations, Investment Banking and Finance etc. He left HSBC Group in 2013 as the Chief Risk Officer, Thailand. Mr. Seneviratne also currently functions as a Director of Lanka Clear (Pvt) Ltd and Credit Information Bureau of Sri Lanka and serves on the Boards of several subsidiaries of the NDB Group. A past president of The Association of Professional Bankers (APB) Sri Lanka (2010-2011), he has held various positions in the Executive Council of APB for over a decade. 

Ananda Jayalath is currently the Assistant Governor of the Central Bank of Sri Lanka, overseeing the areas of foreign reserves management, monetary policy implementation, domestic banking operations, payments & settlement and information technology. He is also the current Chairman of Sri Lanka’s Financial Reporting and Audit regulator i.e. the Sri Lanka Accounting and Auditing Standards Monitoring Board (SLAASMB), and holds positions in number of other boards and committees representing Central Bank of Sri Lanka. Prior to the present assignment, he was overseeing the area of financial regulation and supervision at the Central bank of Sri Lanka. With more than 30 years of experience and having served in different capacities, his experiences also cover the areas of managing Employees Provident Fund – the Sri Lanka national superannuation fund, monetary policy implementation including open market operations, banking services, foreign reserves management, risk manager, senior dealer in money and capital markets, bank examiner, economist and auditor.

Bingumal Thewarathanthri (Bingu) has been working as CEO/Head of Global Banking at Standard Chartered Bank, Sri Lanka since January 2019. Bingu, counts for more than 20 years of experience within the banking and finance industry. He joined Standard Chartered in 2004. Over the past 14 years, he has held several leadership positions in Sri Lanka and Africa, including the role of Head, Transaction Banking, Mauritius, where he was responsible for setting up the Transaction Banking business for the franchise. He was also responsible for setting up Financial Institutions booking centre for Africa and managed investments going in to Sub Saharan Africa via Mauritius Securities Services hub. Prior to his appointment as CEO, Bingu was heading the, Retail Banking business in Sri Lanka and has been a key member of the Country Management Team of the franchise as well.

Rakhil Fernando has been working as managing director and country head of Daraz, an e-commerce company owned by Alibaba group, since June 2019. In this role, he oversees the business strategy and operations of the Daraz business in Sri Lanka. A veteran of the startup ecosystem in SouthEast Asia, he was previously the Director of Innovation for MetLife in Asia. Before MetLife, he co-founded and led Kashmi, a neo-banking mobile application specifically designed address the needs of millennials across South East Asia.

Jayantha Fernando is the chairman of Sri Lanka CERT|CC, which is the single source of advice and expertise to assist the nation and member organizations, in responding to and recovering from cyber-attacks. He also has 20 years of international & South East Asian experience in a broad range of ICT legal and policy issues. He pioneered drafting of several ICT related legislations. He gave leadership to Sri Lanka’s accession to the Budapest Cybercrime Convention (2015) and Sri Lanka’s ratification of the UN Electronic Communications Convention (2015), both firsts for South Asia. For 10 years he shared operational responsibility for the “e-Sri Lanka Development Project”, the flagship ICT development initiative of the World Bank, with which he was involved from the inception and then as an executive staff member during its implementation phase. He was instrumental in doing the legal blueprint to establish ICTA and Sri Lanka CERT-CC. He developed the legal framework for the use of authentication technologies for Digital Payments. He is presently Chairman of .LK Domain Name Registry, Commissioner SEC and on the Board of many entities. He is also the Legal Advisor of ICTA.

Steve Monaghan is Chairman and CEO of GenLife, a Silicon Valley based start-up in which AIA became the lead investor, to create an R&D capability for insurers around the world in Artificial Intelligence and Blockchain. Originally a commercial pilot, Steve has held senior corporate and banking roles in product, marketing, operations, innovation and general management. He has worked for leading corporations and financial institutions including Dell, Compaq, Citigroup, OCBC, Shinsei, DBS Bank and AIA. Throughout his career, he has specialized in introducing new business models, businesses and products in all major markets in Asia and has filed 6 patents in FinTech. Beside GenLife Steve hold board level positions in True Global Ventures, Borderless Healthcare Mobile China, HK Israel Trade Association, Pulse Global and a private investor in Artificial Intelligence, Life Sciences, Healthtech, Fintech and ICO's.

Michiel Ykema has 20 years of experience in designing and implementing organizational change. He has lead change programmes on topics such as corporate innovation, leadership, collaboration and organizational culture.Starting work from a background in Industrial Management, his work gradually focused more on the touching points of business and technology on the one hand and leadership, organizational culture and employee engagement on the other. Right now, he is partner @ Limpid & Co, an international transformational agency.

Richard Hartung is currently managing director of Transcarta and international resource director of The Asian Banker with over 20 years of experience in the payments & consumer financial services industry. He has held senior roles for financial institutions including Citibank, Mastercard International, and OCBC Cards. Mr. Hartung is a consultant in the areas of retail banking, cards and payment products to financial institutions, service providers, and software companies throughout the Asia Pacific region.

Dr. Indrajit Coomaraswamy has been the Governor of Central Bank of Sri Lanka since July 4, 2016. Dr. Coomaraswamy has 30 years of experience in policy making and providing economic advisory services, on both macroeconomic and structural issues at national and intergovernmental levels. He served as Director of Economic Affairs and held other key positions while his stay at the Commonwealth Secretariat. He was an official in the Central Bank of Sri Lanka from 1974 to 1989. He worked in the Economic Research, Statistics and in Bank Supervision Departments of the bank. He remained with Ministry of Finance and Planning from 1981 to 1989 on secondment. He has also advised companies like Tokyo Cement Company (Lanka) PLC, John Keells Holdings PLC and Pathfinder as non-executive independent director. Dr Coomaraswamy was involved in advising the government on negotiating with Bretton Woods Institutions and other major donors and on matters relating to macroeconomics and structural reforms.

Rajkumar is currently the founder and president of FinTech Association of Sri Lanka (FASL), which is an independent, not-for-profit, and crossindustry organisation representing local and global FinTech community to support the development, innovation and investment in the FinTech sector. He represents organiations, including American Academy of Project Management and Global Academy of Finance and Management, in Sri Lanka and Maldives. He is also founder and CEO of Ambuli International, a company which focuses on use and application of blockchain, AI and big data within the financial services industry. Rajkumar has represented Sri Lanka at many local as well as international forums as speaker.

Harsha Wanigatunga is the chief information officer at Seylan Bank PLC. His expertise spans diverse industries such as aerospace (NASA, Lockheed Martin – USA), banking (JPMorgan Chase – USA and Seylan Bank), payment systems/networks (LankaClear / LankaPay), software engineering, enterprise IT services (Virtusa) and healthcare (Owen Healthcare Inc.). He has over 26 years of extensive global experience, inclusive of 9 years in the USA and 7 years in multinational organizations. He was instrumental in architecting and leading the modernization of national retail payment systems in Sri Lanka, that are in par with global standards. This includes LankaPay – CEFTS (the real-time payment system), national ATM network (LankaPay - CAS), batch mode payments (SLIPS), Cheque Clearing System (CITS), etc. He is actively engaged in research, design and development of enterprise scale digital banking systems that create significant value and convenience for users, merchants, businesses and banks alike. He is a member of The Honor Society of Phi Kappa Phi and Certified Payment Card Industry Security Implementer (PCI DSS).

Kanishka Weeramunda currently the CEO of PayMedia (Pvt) Ltd, a rapidly evolving Fin-Tech company in Sri Lanka, whose products are currently simplifying the user experience of millions around the country and enables clients to gain a competitive edge by enhancing digital services based on process automation and real-time payments. Holding more than 18 years of high level experience in the ICT industry, Weeramunda invested in 5 active start-ups and founded Square Hub, which accommodates these start-ups. As a mentor he guides the startups in the IT Services sector to expand their businesses both locally and internationally. He is a member of the British Computer Society and a Chartered IT professional. He is alumni of MIT Global Startup Labs and also a scholar of Global Connect Program hosted by Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology and the startup exchange program hosted by the Infocom Investments in Singapore. He is a former visiting lecturer of University Moratuwa, University of Middlesex UK, Post Graduate Institute of Management in Dubai and Qatar and The American University of Emirates in Dubai. Weeramunda has represented Sri Lanka in many international startup events across Europe and Asia, bringing in many new opportunities to the growing Sri Lankan start up community.

Conrad Dias counts over 25 years of experience and possesses domain expertise in sectors such as Trading, Banking and Finance, Assets Management and Manufacturing. He currently serves as a board member of LOLC Overseas Operations and is a director of Digital Mobility (Pvt) Ltd popular knows as Pick Me, and several other organizations in Sri Lanka. In recognition of his contributions to the LOLC Group, and the local IT Industry as a whole, Conrad was awarded the CSSL CIO of the Year in 2016. He was also awarded the Professional Excellence Award 2017 at the event organized by Institute of Certified Management of Accountants of Sri Lanka. His previous tenures include Group CIO of Hirdaramani Group of Companies, AVP of Vanik Incorporations Limited, and systems manager Eagle NDB Fund Management Company Limited.