Fast Forward Studio Live

Former accountant frustrated with number crunching who is now a happy technologist building a leading compliance and advisory platform for the profession.

Brian is an Engagement Lead within Deloitte Ireland’s Consumer & Technology Business (CTB) Audit department. Brian works with the firm’s largest family and privately-owned clients (audit and non-audit). Brian lectures on a range of topics including audit, financial accounting/reporting and finance on behalf of Chartered Accountants Ireland.

He announced the death of the smartphone years ago and founded In The Pocket, the first Digital Product Studio in Belgium. Lemaire states it doesn't make sense to think of digital in niches. That's why his company, In The Pocket, designs and builds for the combination of powerful technologies needed to fully tackle the digital opportunity.

Martin de Bie is an innovation advisor at 216 Accountants. 216 accountants is an organization where data-driven systems form the basis for in-depth financial advice for SMEs. He is also active in the national and international Accounttech movement. And as a representative of the NBA, he is active as chair of the digital working group at the EFAA and is the digitization expert of the SME team at Accountancy Europe.

Nathalie Vandepeute has more than twenty years of experience in the banking world. Since 29th June she is CEO of Bancontact Payconiq Company, the Belgian market leader in electronic and mobile payment services.

Ken co-founded the AI company, Boltzmann after his researcher position at UGent and several years of financial modelling experience in banking. During his engineering studies he met Silverfin’s co-founder Tim Vandecasteele who would ultimately show him the opportunities for AI in accounting. This led to the launch of Ludwig Assistant last year at Silverfin’s Fast Forward event.

Partner in the PwC Tax Consultants - TRS practice in Belgium with more than 20 years experience in assisting and advising a large number of subsidiaries and branches of international corporations in Belgium with respect to bookkeeping, management accounting, statutory financial statements and corporate income tax compliance.

Fell in love with Ruby on Rails years ago because it’s a programming language with a focus on simplicity and productivity. That’s exactly what he wanted to achieve with Silverfin: building a platform that makes accountants and their clients more productive in an elegant and intuitive fashion. 

Adrian Blair is the CEO of global fintech firm Receipt Bank. Prior to this, he was the Global COO of Just Eat and the only executive team member to serve throughout the company’s transformation from start-up to FTSE 100. Before this, he led business development for Spotify in Europe and spent six years in commercial roles at Google. 

Sophie leads marketing at Cake, a new fintech company. Cake’s company vision is to improve the financial well-being of European consumers by launching a new banking app that analyses financial data to help people better understand and improve their personal finances.

Dawn Marriott is Chief Executive Officer of Azets. As former Group Chief Operating Officer for Capita plc, Dawn has extensive experience of leading and growing businesses in professional services, outsourcing and software. She is a non-Executive Director of 3 other Hg backed businesses across Europe and has previously been CEO of an Hg backed business, selling that company to a US NASDAQ listed business.