Official Event Advisory Panel
Quest Events would like to take this opportunity to sincerely thank the official event advisory panel who contributed their valuable time and expertise to ensure the agenda for this event is timely and relevant for all stakeholders working in the Australian infrastructure and capital works sectors.
Sunil Aranha
Chief Executive Officer
ThinCats Australia
Chief Executive Officer and Director – qualified with a B.Com. and an MBA, has 25 years of international and local SME sector banking experience with general management roles within Citibank, EFIC and Commonwealth Bank. Also established a successful technology start-up in the entertainment technology sector in early 2000.
Jacqui Colwell
Chief Risk Officer for Personal Banking
National Australia Bank
Jacqui Colwell is the Chief Risk Officer for Personal Banking at NAB. Prior to her current role Jacqui held the position of State General Manager for NAB Business, Victoria and Tasmania, where she was responsible for over $34 billion in lending and $17 billion in deposits and funds management to Victorian and Tasmanian SMEs. Jacqui has over 25 years experience in the financial services industry, across Australia, predominantly in business and institutional banking. She also has significant experience in risk, previously holding the role of Head of Risk in QLD for NAB. Jacqui has also worked in strategy, finance and retail. Jacqui holds a Bachelor of Economics, and is married with three sons.
Andrew Cornell
Managing Editor BlueNotes
ANZ
Andrew Cornell is managing editor of BlueNotes, the ANZ newsroom, a forum for financial services and economic news, opinion and analysis.
Cornell is a multi-award winning journalist, most recently the 2014 Citi Award for Economics writing. He was the 2010 Walkley Award winner for commentary and analysis for a series on how Australia’s financial system survived the financial crisis and is a multiple Walkley finalist. Cornell won the Citigroup/Columbia University Award for Excellence in Business Journalism for analysis of Japan’s economy. He was a recipient of the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade North Asia Research Scholarship.
Cornell was formerly associate editor, senior writer and columnist with the Australian Financial Review, covering business, economics and general culture, including a weekly financial services column and regular magazine essays. He was the senior staff writer for the AFR’s award winning monthly magazine.
From 1998 and 2002 Cornell was the AFR’s North Asia Bureau chief based in Tokyo. Prior to Japan he was a banking and finance correspondent and from 1995 to 2002 he was also Australia and Japan correspondent for the Lafferty Group, specialising in payments and retail banking.
In wider writing, Cornell was the inaugural editor of NewSouthPress’s “Best Business Writing” anthology. He has written and contributed to several books including Australia-Japan: Friendship and Prosperity, published to coincide with the 50th anniversary of formal Australia-Japan economic relations, and the Japan Australia Foundation-sponsored report “Australia and Japan: Beyond the Mainstream”.
Cornell’s career in journalism spans three decades, including 20 years at the AFR. He started his business reporting career in 1987 at the Sun News Pictorial and later moved to the Sunday Herald Sun as business editor and AAP as Melbourne finance editor. He also spent five years as a film reviewer for the Herald and Weekly Times and has authored books on financial planning and business management. Cornell is a Graduate of Melbourne University, BA (Hons) medieval literature and BSc (Genetics).
Kevin Davis
Research Director
Australian Centre for Financial Studies
and Member
The Financial System Inquiry Panel
Kevin Davis is a Professor of Finance at the University of Melbourne. Prior to joining Melbourne in 1987, he was a Senior Lecturer in Economics at the University of Adelaide.
His primary research interests are in the areas of financial institutions and markets, financial engineering and corporate finance. He is co-author/editor of sixteen books in the areas of finance, banking, monetary economics and macroeconomics and numerous journal articles and chapters in books.
Kevin is on the Board (and previously Chairperson) of the Melbourne University Credit Union, and the Board of SIRCA. He has developed and presented numerous training programs for banks and businesses. He has undertaken an extensive range of consulting assignments for financial institutions, business and government, including preparing a report for the Federal Government on Financial System Guarantees.
Most recently, the Federal Government appointed Kevin as a part-time member of the Australian Competition Tribunal. He is a Senior Fellow of Finsia and a Fellow of the FTA and of the AMI Institute, and a member of the Economics Society Australia, Accounting and Finance Association of Australia and New Zealand, American Economic Association, American Finance Association, Financial Management Association, Asian Finance Association.
Matthew Gijselman
Head of Government, Regulatory & Industry Affairs
Australian Retail Credit Association
Matt provides leadership in the development and implementation of ARCA’s government, regulatory and industry strategy to secure positive strategic and reputational outcomes.
Matt has led the political engagement strategy to support a growing acknowledgement of the role of credit risk systems to the broader economy with government and other key stakeholders, as seen in the support for the credit reporting reforms themselves, and in both the Financial System Inquiry outcomes and the recent Productivity Commission inquiry into data access.
Matt has developed and managed an ongoing strategy of engagement with regulators to ensure ARCA is seen as a trusted and specialised peak body. Evidence of this strategy includes ARCA developing the legislative instrument fundamental to the operation of the credit reporting system; and in the finalisaton of the Principles of Reciprocity and Data Exchange (PRDE) after a contentious consultation. The PRDE is the industry self-regulatory instrument that provides rules around reciprocity and data exchange in the credit reporting system. Matt now leads a team rolling out the PRDE, and the Australian Credit Reporting Data Standard (ACRDS).
Belen Lopez
Head of Portfolio Optimisation
Westpac
Belen Lopez is the Head of Portfolio Optimisation at Westpac. Her background is in actuarial science and she dedicated majority of her career understanding customer’s behaviours from an analytical perspective. Her 10 years’ experience in the mortgage industry across Product, Marketing and Portfolio Management in different size organisations such as Aussie Home Loans, Citibank and Westpac; provides her with great knowledge on customer behaviours from a diverse range of segments and through different sales origination channels.