Meet The Commissioners
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Sian Williams is CEO of Switchback, an award-winning London-based charity supporting young men leaving prison to build sustainable lives they can be proud of.
Sian has been a champion for lived experience-led systemic approaches to financial inclusion since 2009, both in her previous work leading Toynbee Hall’s research, policy and innovation programmes in London’s East End and through a range of representative roles, including on the Payments Strategy Forum, the PSR Panel, the Link Consumer Advisory Council, the BBA Consumer Advisory Group, the APP Scams Steering Group, the NILS Advisory Group, the Pay.UK End User Council and the Financial Inclusion Policy Forum.
In all her work, Sian aims to deepen policy-makers’ understanding of systemic causes of exclusion and inequality and demonstrate how co-designing solutions with those people directly affected by an issue leads to more effective, efficient and sustainable solutions. Sucesses include securing the fee-free Basic Bank Account entitlement for people denied access to a mainstream current account and initiating the HMT-funded No Interest Loan Scheme pilot. Key interests are payments innovations which meet the needs of people on precarious incomes (e.g. Request to Pay), increasing access to affordable credit, and ensuring all UK residents have access to a full range of financial products and services that add genuine value and security to people’s lives.
Sian is also Chair of Positive Money, a new economy think tank which campaigns for a money and banking system that enables a fair, sustainable and democratic economy, and a Non-Executive Director at the Financial Inclusion Forum, UK-based network raising awareness of financial inclusion and sharing best practice.
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Sir Brian Pomeroy CBE was formerly Chair of the Treasury’s Financial Inclusion Taskforce. He was the senior independent director of the Financial Conduct Authority and Chair of the UK Government’s Action Group on Cross-Border Remittances. He was formerly a trustee, and then Ambassador, of Money Advice Trust. He was a non-executive director of QBE Insurance Group.
He was formerly Chair of the Independent Commission on Equitable Life Payments, the Gambling Commission, the Responsible Gambling Strategy Board, the Payments Council, the National Lottery Commission, Centrepoint, Homeless Link and The Photographers’ Gallery; a member of the Financial Reporting Review Panel, the Audit Commission and the Disability Rights Taskforce and The Social Market Foundation; and a Nominated Member of the Council of Lloyd’s. He was the Senior Partner of Deloitte Consulting.
Parliamentary Representatives
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John Glen is the Conservative Member of Parliament for Salisbury. He previously served as Paymaster General and Minister for the Cabinet Office, as Chief Secretary to the Treasury from 2022 to 2023. Before that he was the longest-serving Economic Secretary to the Treasury from 2018 to 2022, during which time he was also Minister for Financial Inclusion.
John has held a range of ministerial and parliamentary roles, including Parliamentary Private Secretary to the Chancellor of the Exchequer and Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Arts, Heritage and Tourism. He has been a strong advocate for financial services, economic growth, and local investment. He also played a significant contributory role in the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Hunger and Food Poverty's inquiry, Feeding Britain, which examined food insecurity and proposed solutions to address hunger in the UK.
Before entering Parliament in 2010, John worked in the private sector, holding positions at Accenture and the Strategy Unit at the Ministry of Defence. He holds a degree from Oxford University and has been actively engaged in his local community, championing economic development and infrastructure improvements in Salisbury.
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Luke Charters is the Labour Member of Parliament for York Outer.
Before his election to Parliament, Luke had a distinguished career in financial services. He began at the Bank of England, contributing to payments infrastructure projects and the polymer banknotes programme, before moving to the Financial Conduct Authority, focusing on fraud prevention. Subsequently, he led the Fraud and Compliance department at the global fintech company Remote.
Since entering Parliament, Luke has concentrated on financial services, convening debates on fraud and economic crime. He serves as Chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on Financial Technology (FinTech) and on the Public Accounts Committee.
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Bailey Kursar is founder of fintech-for-good Touco Lab. A financial inclusion advocate, she is also a member of the Government’s Financial Inclusion Policy Forum.
At Touco, she led the development of an Open Banking app designed to help those with mental health problems better manage their money with the help of a family member or carer. Working with the Money and Mental Health Policy Institute, her team was able to develop the app with direct input from those with lived experience, adhering to an inclusive design methodology.
Bailey is also author of an industry guide to inclusive design published by the Money Advice Trust and Fair By Design.
Prior to founding Touco, Bailey worked at several early stage ‘fintech’ companies including MarketFinance and Monzo.
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Charles Randell CBE was Chair of the Financial Conduct Authority and of the Payments Systems Regulator from 2018 to 2022. Prior to that, he was a founding member of the board of the Bank of England’s Prudential Regulation Authority when it was established in 2013. He has also held positions on the boards of two Government Departments, the Department of Energy and Climate Change and the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy.
From 1980 to 2013 he practised at the law firm Slaughter and May, where he is now a Senior Adviser.
Charles is a member of the Leadership Council of the East End Community Foundation’s Life Chances Campaign, and a patron and volunteer at LinkAge Southwark. He is also a Visiting Professor in financial services law at the Centre for Commercial Law Studies, Queen Mary University of London.
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Danielle has spent the past 14 years working in financial inclusion, most recently as Head of EMEA and APAC at Remitly, a digital cross-border remittances leader.
Prior to this, Danielle worked for several years in diaspora and emerging market consumer finance, and on the ground in several African countries. She led a DfID-financed private sector development programme in DR Congo; launched and scaled a mobile-enabled health microinsurance business in Uganda; as well as spearheading inclusive finance initiatives in Senegal and Egypt. Danielle currently serves as an advisor to bMoneywize, a UK social enterprise promoting financial education for children, and as a Non-Executive Director of Techfugees. In 2017, Danielle was named as one of Management Today’s 35 Under 35 Women in Management, and in 2022 she won the ESG award on the Innovate Finance Women in Fintech Powerlist.
She is passionate about the intersection of financial inclusion and fintech, particularly for the benefit of women and marginalised groups.
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Howard is Complex Change Director at PwC. His professional experiences have been varied and rewarding. Supporting financial services firms to engage more effectively with the needs of their customers and their own regulatory responsibilities, Howard has led creative teams that innovate via new technology and transform key operational processes and customer-facing experiences.
Outside of PwC, he chairs the governing body of The Bridge School in Islington and was involved in setting up a free school within the broader Bridge London Multi Academy Trust. He was also heavily involved in a social enterprise committed to lowering the cost of white goods for individuals who need to purchase them on a Buy Now Pay Later basis.
Growing up outside Oxford, Howard’s early life was complicated, adjusting to life in a wheelchair and proving to the education system that he could contribute fully to the conversation. As a Financial Inclusion Commissioner, Howard will look to draw upon this ‘lived’ experience as well as his experience in financial services. Life has taught him to be patient and pragmatic in seeking compromise and a way forward. He is passionate about equality and believes that everyone has a voice, and we all deserve respect and understanding. In the words of Martin Luther King: “People fail to get along because they fear each other; they fear each other because they don’t know each other; they don’t know each other because they have not communicated with each other.”
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A financial access, inclusion, resilience and outcomes-based regulation advocate, Johnny Timpson OBE has extensive experience in insurance and the banking sector plus academic, professional, trade body and senior leadership experience. Patron of the Vocational Rehabilitation Association UK and Chair of the Building Resilient Households Group Johnny is additionally non-executive Chair of specialist military insurance brokerage Absolute Military, and cross sector vulnerability tech Morgan Ash. A Financial Inclusion Commissioner, he is additionally a member of the Financial Services Consumer Panel, National Independent Consumer Organisation, BIBA Access To Insurance Committee, Hargreaves Lansdown Savings & Resilience Barometer Sounding Board and the Insurance Institute of London Diversity and Inclusion Committee,
A former Cabinet Office and DWP Financial Services sector Ambassador with lived experience of disability, Johnny is a founding member of GAIN – the Group for Autism, Insurance, Investment and Neurodiversity plus currently has ambassador roles with the Surviving Economic Abuse Charity and Age Irrelevance. A Trustee of the Caudwell Children’s Charity, he also holds advisory roles with the Women In Protection Network the Protection Distributors Group.
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John Howells is Chief Executive of LINK, the UK’s cash machine network and coordinator for access to cash infrastructure such as shared branches. LINK plays a key role in ensuring access to cash for consumers as the UK moves increasingly towards digital payments. John is also a Commissioner with the Financial Inclusion Commission and a Non-Executive Director for MedCo. John’s previous roles include for Capgemini, responsible for public sector consulting. His early career was with Gemini Consulting’s financial services strategy practice and Lloyds Bank. He holds an MBA from London Business School and a Materials Science degree from Oxford University.
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Catherine Foot is Director of the Standard Life Centre for the Future of Retirement, a think tank dedicated to helping everyone achieve long-term financial security.
She is a social researcher, policy analyst and campaigner, and came to the issue of financial inclusion through a career focused on the social and economic implications of longer lives and our ageing population.
Prior to establishing her current think tank in 2021 (under the former name of Phoenix Insights), Catherine was the founding Director of Evidence for the Centre for Ageing Better, a national charity established to address inequality in ageing and improve the inclusion of older people in all areas of society. She has worked over her career in employment, health, social care and housing policy.
Through the Standard Life Centre for the Future of Retirement, Catherine campaigns for a fairer and more inclusive pension system, so that everyone in the UK can be: included in adequate and affordable pension saving; supported to access the help they need to make good decisions about their pension and retirement income sources; and protected from poverty with an adequate and sustainable state pension and benefits system.
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Pooja Bhachu is Director of Public Policy, UK&I, at Mastercard. She leads Mastercard’s policy work on financial and digital inclusion for people and small businesses, in the UK and EU. She has spent the last 17 years, through various roles in the public sector and in financial services, working to advance equity and inclusion for underserved groups in the UK.
In her current role, Pooja leads Mastercard’s work to identify policy and regulatory gaps, as well opportunities for payments innovation to promote financial inclusion and inclusive growth across the UK. She is co-author of a number of policy papers focussing on the link between financial inclusion and economic growth including ‘Building Better Lives Across The UK’ and ‘Get Britain Growing: how digital payments technologies enable growth: pathways to inclusion’.
She is also Chair of The Payments Association’s Project Inclusion, a cross industry group set up to inform and collaborate with government, regulators, and third sector bodies, on payments innovations and policy solutions that can support financial inclusion.
Prior to joining Mastercard, Pooja managed policy and industry engagement at the Payment Systems Regulator (PSR) and the Payments Council. Pooja started her career as a Civil Servant in HM Government, working for the UK Government’s Chief Whip in Downing Street and as Private Secretary to the Leader of Westminster City Council.