Summit Speakers

Juanita Phillips

MC

Juanita Phillips is one of Australia’s best loved and experienced news presenters, and an accomplished MC and speaker.

For over two decades, she anchored the ABC’s flagship 7pm News in Sydney, making her the public broadcaster’s longest-serving prime-time female TV news presenter. Before this time, she anchored CNN’s morning news and business show in London for five years, and was one of the first Australians to present TV news on the BBC.

Ms Phillips has also worked for Channel Ten and Sky News, and has been a columnist and feature writer for The Bulletin magazine, News Corporation and Fairfax. She has written a series of children’s books, The Newspaper Kids, and is the author of a best-selling memoir about juggling work and motherhood, A Pressure Cooker Saved My Life.

Maha El Dimachki

Head of the Singapore Centre Bank for International Settlements (BIS) Innovation Hub

Ms El Dimachki is Head of the BIS Innovation Hub Singapore Centre. The centre develops public goods in the technology space to support central banks in how they discharge their roles in a digital economy and improve the financial system using novel ideas and emerging technologies.

Before her appointment to this position, Ms El Dimachki was Head of Department for Early and High Growth Oversight leading the Financial Conduct Authority’s (FCA) response to the Kalifa review of Fintech. Previously, she served as Chief Payments Officer at Pay.UK on secondment from the FCA, responsible for running the payments operations of BACS, Faster Payments, Image Clearing Services, and related managed services.

Ms El Dimachki joined the FCA in 2017 to set up the first Payments Department and was responsible for crafting and implementing the FCA supervisory strategy for the UK Payments Sector. This included leading the implementation of the Second Payments Services Directive (PSD2) and Open Banking.

Ms El Dimachki has a keen interest in observing and participating in the many exciting changes that are unfolding in the financial services, innovation and fintech environment. She recently sat on the SteerCo developing the strategy and blueprint for the UK’s newly created Centre for Finance Innovation and Technology.

Ms El Dimachki is the author of Fintech Regulation in Practice, which provides a guide to the practical considerations that fintechs, banks adopting fintech and other key players in the fintech ecosystem need to take into account when embedding regulation.

Ms El Dimachki has a Degree in Commerce from Macquarie University and a Masters in Public Administration from the London School of Economics and Political Science.

Follow Maha on X

Brad Jones

Assistant Governor (Financial System) Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA)

Dr Brad Jones was appointed to the position of Assistant Governor (Financial System) at the RBA in 2022 and serves as Deputy Chair of the Payments System Board.

Dr Jones has oversight of the Bank's payments policy work, including on the future of money. He is also responsible for the Bank's work on financial stability and production of the twice-yearly Financial Stability Review. He represents the Bank as a member on the Council of Financial Regulators, and in international fora at the Financial Stability Board and the Basel Committee for Banking Supervision. He is a member of the Advisory Board of the Institute of Global Finance and a signatory to The Banking and Finance Oath.

Dr Jones joined the RBA in 2018 as the Head of International Department, before taking over as the Head of Economic Analysis Department.

Before joining the RBA, Dr Jones was at the International Monetary Fund in Washington DC for five years, where he served as senior advisor on the international financial system in the Monetary and Capital Markets Department. Prior to that, he held senior macroeconomic research and investment responsibilities for just under a decade at Deutsche Bank in London and Hong Kong.

Dr Jones holds a PhD in finance from Macquarie University, is a graduate member of the Australian Institute of Company Directors, and served for five years as a Fellow at the University of Cambridge Judge Business School.