Consultants
Sophie Peeters
Sophie’s background is one of a financial regulatory lawyer. She practiced financial regulation for almost ten years at a magic circle law firm. The last three years of her time there she started focusing on FinTech and payments, assisting – mainly consortia of banks – with the regulatory issues of their joint innovative payment products.
From the ambition to focus only on payments and to be able to be closer to the payments community, Sophie left the bar to become an independent consultant. In her consultancy role, she assisted A78 (the former federation of Belgian TPPs) in their interactions with the Belgian banks and the National Bank of Belgium on the implementation of the PSD2. From the observation that there was a need for a representation of the Belgian payments industry more broadly, she co-founded PayBelgium. As board member of PayBelgium she is actively involved in developing and defending common policy positions on behalf of the payment service providers in Belgium. Sophie is also Belgian co-ambassador of the European Women Payments Network.
Accordingly, Sophie combines a deep financial regulatory and payments expertise with innovative thinking and a vast fintech network. Last year, Sophie also became a certified cybersecurity professional. As such, she grasps the regulatory developments in that area (DORA) both from a legal and technical perspective and is able to bridge between legal/compliance functions and information security functions.
Ignace Leroy
Ignace joined PayInnovate.eu following his graduation at the Karel de Grote University College (Bachelor of Business Management and Law). Fascinated by the payments sector and its compliance challenges, he works closely with Sophie to further strengthen our compliance offering. Ignace worked on various on-site compliance projects and is a certified data protection officer.
An Verschueren
An has nearly 13 years of experience in Financial Services and is a certified AML specialist (ACAMS). She started her career within the Governance, Risk and Compliance department of PwC Belgium where she was in charge of banking and insurance regulatory compliance matters. Prior to becoming an independent consultant, An assumed the role of internal AML compliance expert at Degroof Petercam as well as of Head of Financial Crime at Wise Europe.
Jonathan Heywood
Jonathan is a seasoned information security and business continuity consultant who has worked in the financial sector for almost 20 years.
Elke Stroobants
Elke has an intellectual property rights background and has over 20 years of experience negotiating commercial contracts (IP/ICT, outsourcing, distribution) with/for the software industry, including fintech. She has worked for startups, scale-ups as well as well-established multinationals as a lawyer, in-house legal counsel and, currently, external consultant.