SWIFT appoints Lisa O'Connor as Asia Pacific head of standards

SWIFT recently announced the appointment of Lisa O’Connor as Head of Standards, Asia Pacific, based in Hong Kong. As the adoption of financial messaging standards is gaining traction in the region, O’Connor takes over the standards team in the region that was led by Alexandre Kech - Head of Securities Markets & Standards, Asia Pacific for the last five years. She will report into Philippe Dirckx, Managing Director, Head of Markets & Initiatives, Asia Pacific.

Philippe Dirckx, Managing Director, Head of Markets & initiatives Asia Pacific, SWIFT said: “We are delighted to welcome Lisa O’Connor as Head of Standards for Asia Pacific. Under her leadership, the team will continue to support the implementation of ISO 20022 as our member banks, corporates and market infrastructures on their adoption plans and bring this support to the next frontier; such as promoting ISO 20022 adoption in Distributed Ledger Technology implementations”.

O’Connor brings extensive experience with her, coming from Standard Chartered Bank where she was the Head of Security Services Hong Kong and Head of Security Services & Corporate Agency and Trust Product Management, Transaction Banking for North Asia and Greater China. Before joining Standard Chartered, she was previously SWIFT’s global RMB initiative director and director of securities markets for Asia Pacific.

Alexandre Kech, as Head of Securities & FX Markets, Asia Pacific, will now exclusively focus on defining and rolling out SWIFT’s securities & FX strategy for the region. Securities & FX represent more than 50% of SWIFT's messaging volumes with a double digits annual growth. As part of his role, he will continue to look at FinTech engagement in the region with a particular focus on Distributed Ledger Technology for securities, FX and capital markets in general.