Speaker

Kendall Park is a derivatives lawyer at Westpac Banking Corporation where she leads a team of lawyers implementing initial margin for uncleared OTC derivatives. She has a background in multijurisdictional derivatives regulation and has experience working at major banks locally and internationally. She has a deep insight into margin regulation for uncleared OTC derivatives and a focus on partnering with businesses to provide practical solutions. Her derivatives expertise includes ISDA documentation, repos, structured products, financial markets transactions and strong derivative products knowledge.

Ben Watson is the CEO of Maroon Analytics Australia, a Quantitative Analytics Consultancy that helps Banks and Financial institutions with any aspect of their quant requirements. Maroon has been helping its clients with some of the more complex issues that they face today, such OIS discounting, XVA pricing, Initial Margin modeling, and market and credit risk management.

Ben has recently developed a full-featured risk management system called Quantics. This system is currently being rolled out to a wholesale fund manager that is being used to manage the credit and market risk, as well as provides full profit and loss attribution on a large credit portfolio.
Ben came to the Maroon business with 23 years working for Investment Banks as a Quantitative Analyst. Up to 2012, he was the APAC regional head of the Quant function for RBS, and before that he was the local head of Quantitative Analytics at ABN AMRO Australia. Working directly with traders he has a long track record of building real-time pricing and risk management systems. He has built Credit, Bond, Swaps, FWD FX, Swaptions, Inflation Bonds and Swaps, MBS, CDS pricing and trading systems for the front office. While at RBS he managed the successful OIS migration of a large derivatives trading book and since working as has a consultant, he has advised and helped implement a number OIS migration projects.

As part of the Marron Analytics offering, Ben has developed a number of training courses in OIS Discounting, Counterparty Credit, and CVA, XVA, Initial Margin, Stress Testing, Pricing Fixed Income products, VaR/ Expected Shortfall and VBA for Finance. He has delivered these training courses across Australia, Taiwan, Singapore, US and New Zealand.

Experienced risk manager with a passion for driving profitability and desk capability to achieve superior financial outcomes, meet regulatory requirements and improve operational efficiency. 5+ year track record in prudent risk management ranging across exotic credit derivatives, short end cash and futures books. Skilled at interpreting both domestic and international regulatory directives in the derivatives market and at ensuring the business not only remains compliant but also thrives (NCCD Initial Margin – CPS 226, Large Exposures – APS 221). Able to adapt to diverse areas within markets by bringing deep experience in Excel, C# programming and SQL.

Max Allan is a Senior Associate in the Financial Markets and Regulation team of King & Wood Mallesons. Mr. Allan specialises in advising banks, funds, corporates, exchanges, clearing houses, regulators and government in relation to netting, collateral, complex international derivative and trading documentation, exchanges, clearing systems, payment systems and other financial market infrastructure. He has significant experience in preparing and negotiating transaction documentation for structured and complex derivatives and credit support arrangements. He advises clients generally on financial markets and financial systems, particularly in emerging issues such as the use, risks and impact of technological change (such as blockchain) and new legal and regulatory frameworks. Mr. Allan has worked with international bank, financial market infrastructure and government clients on various secondments and, recently, worked with Scott Farrell as part of his secretariat in the Australian Government’s Review into Open Banking. Mr. Allan is also a key part of the KWM team that developed the “DnA” smart contract architecture and fintech publications.

Dale’s practice focuses on asset and structured finance, financial regulation and derivatives.  He acts for banks, industry groups and buy side clients on OTC documentation, reform projects/issues and netting and collateral opinions for different documentation and counterparty types.  He also structures bespoke derivative solutions to meet regulatory, credit or capital requirements.

Prior to joining KWM, Dale worked for international law firms in Sydney, London and Hong Kong and in derivatives legal at Societe Generale in Hong Kong and London. He was also a banker in Hong Kong in the structured finance team at HSBC for many years.

Dale is cited in AFR’s Best Lawyers 2018 for Structured Finance Law, Banking and Finance Law, Debt Capital Markets Law, Financial Institutions Law and Asset Finance Law for both Brisbane and Sydney.

He is currently assisting the United Nations Committee for International Trade Law (UNCITRAL) drafting a model law for security over property and also sits on a number of banking law committees and working groups (Walrus, APLMA, ISDA, and the AWG - implementing the Cape Town Convention).

Allan McGregor has over 15 years of financial markets experience across derivatives, central clearing, debt capital markets and payments.  

Allan is currently a Senior Manager in the Derivatives & OTC Markets business at ASX where he leads the commercial team responsible for Derivatives Clearing, Cross-product platforms and Strategy. Since joining ASX in 2008 he has delivered significant market initiatives including the successful launch of ASX’s OTC clearing service in 2013 and the subsequent delivery of an automated cloud-based margin optimisation service.

Prior to ASX, Allan worked in Treasury and International Markets at St.George Bank (now part of Westpac Group) where he was responsible for defining and executing product and platform changes required to augment the bank’s fixed income, foreign exchange and international payments services.

Sean has over 20 years’ experience within institutional and investment banking. Prior to Deloitte, he was Head of Thought Leadership at Westpac’s Institutional Bank. As a Managing Director at Global banks, Sean held key roles included Global Head of Operational Risk, APAC Head of Product Control, COO of European Equity Trading, Head of Finance for Continental Europe and COO Australia. Sean's Advisory experience has focused on supporting Financial Institutions on Risk, Technology and Business Transformation. 

Robert Fievez is Melbourne based with over 15 years’ experience in Government and Financial Markets specialising in broad scope regulatory change. His experience has focused on helping firms, large and small, to understand how regulatory changes are impacting how collateral is used effectively and efficiently. This includes matching the business and regulatory requirements against the underlying portfolio impact and implementing the transition to new operating and business models. Mr. Fievez has also led engagement with local (APRA and RBA) and overseas (US Federal Reserve, Japanese Financial Services Agency, etc.) regulators across a range of derivative reform issues. Mr. Fievez is currently working with a range of buy-side clients as they achieve scale.