Josianne Robb has joined Manulife in Hong Kong as chief digital officer for Asia, starting this month. During the previous three years, she had served as regional head of I.T. for digital at Prudential Corporation Asia, her first job to combine technology with P&L responsibility. She has also worked on customer experience at AIA. Robb was named one of DigFin’s 25 women fintech leaders in Hong Kong.
She joins a new team. Last summer, Manulife promoted William Man to become Asia chief information officer and COO, responsible for digital execution and improving the customer journey. It also promoted Ivan Chan to head distribution.
Elsewhere in Hong Kong
Fred Ngan has co-founded Bowtie, the first virtual insurer licensed in Hong Kong. Bowtie, with the financial backing of Sun Life Financial, will offer medical insurance and other plans to customers directly. Ngan will serve as CEO. He was previously co-founder of Seasonalife (see story), a B2B platform in Hong Kong enabling insurance advisors to compare products.
Hans Lombardo has been appointed the advisory board of systema AI, a Hong Kong-based company using artificial intelligence to help clients “hyper-personalize” offers in areas including digital payments, digital currencies and e-commerce. Lombardo continues to serve as chief marketing officer at Blockpass, a Hong Kong company building blockchain-based identity protocols for the Internet of Things.
Benjamin Quinlan has been appointed senior advisor at Picowork, a Hong Kong-based startup using cloud technology to let companies connect to third-party software. Quinlan remains CEO and managing partner at Quinlan & Associates, a strategy consultancy focused on fintech.
Singapore
Samson Lee, founder of CoinStreet Partners in Hong Kong, is now also co-founder of Singapore-based STO Global-X. The new company has released an exchange for licensed institutions and digital asset-exchange operators to create and trade security tokens. CoinStreet, which aims to build a decentralized investment bank, is a backer of the project, along with BMI Capital Partners.
Australia
Andy White has been appointed deputy chair of the Emerging Payments Association Asia. EPA Asia, based in Hong Kong, aims to unify the region’s payments agenda for regulation and business development. White remains COO at Australian Payments Network in Sydney.
Japan
Savio Gomez, based in Yokohama, Japan, has been appointed advisor to Integrity.One as of this month. Integrity.One is a Canadian blockchain company focused on providing third-party expertise to small businesses. Gomez remains founder of KrisTech.io, an advisory firm for fintech in blockchain and artificial intelligence.
Russia
Mark Zavadskiy, previously head of digital business at Russia’s Sberbank, has been named chairman of Sberbank Telecom. While at the bank, Moscow-based Zadaskiy had overseen assets outside of core banking, including fintech Yandex Money, SberMobile and Sbercloud.
U.K.
Susanne Chishti has joined the British Blockchain Association as a member of its advisory board. The BBA advocates for blockchain and distributed-ledger technology adoption in the U.K. Chishti remains CEO of Fintech Circle, a U.K. seed-stage investor, consultancy and industry network.
USA
Matt Trudeau has joined crypto trading platform ErisX in New York as chief strategy officer. ErisX has recently attracted investment from Bitmain, Fidelity Investments and Nasdaq. Trudeau was previously president and co-founder of TradeWind Markets (see story), a company applying distributed-ledger technology to institutional trading of commodities.
