2020-Present
Group CTO/CIO
Ephelia Group
I provide complete oversight of the Group's Technology Ecosystem and Engineering Team. I lead technical execution aligned with business objectives, focusing on scalable Enterprise Architectures for Payment Solutions both on-premise and in the Cloud.
Highlights
- Enterprise-grade payment infrastructure leadership
- Hybrid cloud + on-premise scalable architectures
- Group technology ecosystem oversight & governance
- Enterprise payment solutions for mission-critical operations
- Technical vendor & partnership management
I joined Ephelia Group in late 2020 as Group CTO/CIO, brought in to establish an internal technology advisory function that would serve as the company’s technical conscience. I was tasked with scrutinizing, challenging, and strategically guiding acquisitions and partnerships in the payments and banking space.
The Strategic Mission
Ephelia Group operates as a financial and regulatory holding company for a portfolio of technology-enabled payment and banking ventures. My role is to ensure that every technical decision, partnership, and acquisition aligns with long-term strategic objectives while maintaining the highest standards of financial integrity and regulatory compliance.
The unique model I support bridges PortIT’s engineering innovation with Ephelia’s financial governance and regulatory infrastructure, enabling the group to deliver Bank-in-a-Box solutions across multiple markets and regulated domains. This separation of concerns (engineering agility paired with regulatory discipline) has become central to how we scale globally.
Building the Platform Portfolio (2020-Present)
Under my technical stewardship, Ephelia has launched approximately 10 distinct platform brands across diverse financial segments: payments and acquiring, payment cards, private banking, investment solutions, crypto and digital assets, NFT infrastructure, and eCommerce financial services. These platforms operate across the EU, Switzerland, UK, New Zealand, US, and UAE, each with distinct regulatory requirements and technical challenges.
Navigating this complexity required working closely with multiple regulatory authorities. We’ve successfully managed regulatory applications and approvals with the FCA (UK), Bank of Italy (Italian payments), CSSF (Luxembourg electronic money institutions), FINMA (Swiss banking and DLT), and VARA (UAE virtual assets)—each with their own compliance frameworks, reporting requirements, and technological expectations.
Advisory & Governance Leadership
Unlike my hands-on CTO role at PortIT, my position at Ephelia is fundamentally strategic and advisory. I serve as the Executive Board’s technical partner, providing the expertise and perspective that bridges engineering innovation with regulatory accountability. This role encompasses several critical domains that shape how the group operates and scales.
Technology & Partnership Strategy
I evaluate all major technology partnerships and vendor relationships, ensuring they align with our architectural standards and regulatory obligations. Over the past five years, we’ve cultivated partnerships with tier-1 fintech infrastructure providers including Stripe, Currency Cloud, ClearJunction, and Wallester. Each partnership was strategically chosen to strengthen our market position, extend our geographic reach, or enhance our operational capabilities—but only after rigorous technical and regulatory assessment.
Regulatory & Compliance Architecture
The financial services industry is among the most heavily regulated sectors globally. My advisory role encompasses guiding Ephelia through the multifaceted complexity of operating across jurisdictions with fundamentally different regulatory philosophies and technical requirements.
The challenge isn’t just compliance with a single regulator—it’s managing conflicting or complementary requirements across multiple jurisdictions simultaneously. For instance, EU GDPR and UK Data Protection Act impose similar privacy frameworks, but with distinct supervisory bodies and enforcement mechanisms. Meanwhile, Switzerland’s regulatory approach is more principle-based, requiring different technical evidence to demonstrate compliance. The UAE’s VARA regulation is entirely new territory, requiring us to pioneer technical approaches to virtual asset custody and transaction monitoring that no other regulator has yet codified.
At the operational level, this manifests in technical challenges like designing Know-Your-Customer (KYC) and Know-Your-Business (KYB) systems that capture jurisdiction-specific beneficial ownership requirements while maintaining consistent audit trails across the entire portfolio. Or architecting transaction monitoring and risk-scoring systems that meet the distinct money laundering thresholds and reporting timelines of the FCA, Bank of Italy, and CSSF simultaneously—each with different regulatory expectations about what constitutes adequate suspicious activity detection.
Data localization requirements add another layer of complexity. While some jurisdictions mandate that customer data remain within geographic boundaries, others require the ability to share data for regulatory inspections. We’ve had to design technically sophisticated solutions that respect all these requirements without creating operational bottlenecks or audit nightmares.
Acquisition & Technology Assessment
Ephelia’s growth strategy involves evaluating and integrating technology-centric ventures in the payments and banking space. My role provides the technical due diligence function. I assess architectural maturity, scalability, and compliance readiness of acquisition targets. I work closely with the business team to evaluate not just what a technology can do, but whether it can operate within our regulatory frameworks, leverage our PortIT infrastructure, and scale across our target markets.
Operational Oversight & Governance
As a member of Ephelia’s Executive Board, I provide the technical perspective on strategic decisions that shape how the group grows and evolves. This means ensuring alignment between our technical capabilities and business objectives, identifying risks before they become regulatory or financial problems, and optimizing our portfolio to generate sustainable returns across multiple regulated markets and product verticals.
Strategic Impact
Ephelia’s portfolio represents significant market presence across regulated financial services. My advisory role ensures that all platforms operate within their respective regulatory frameworks without compromising on compliance or cutting corners on governance. By establishing clear separation between technology delivery (PortIT) and regulatory governance (Ephelia), we’ve created an operating model that scales across highly regulated markets without sacrificing speed or innovation.
The success of this model demonstrates that fintech ventures don’t have to choose between technical agility and regulatory discipline. When these functions are properly separated and strategically aligned, they become mutually reinforcing. Compliance requirements drive better architectural decisions, and solid engineering practices make regulatory compliance demonstrable and defensible.
