"Their global experience and leadership, drawn from a variety of backgrounds, will be vital in ensuring we can act more quickly to reduce harm to consumers and ensure market integrity."
The FCA announced a restructure in December, which brought together two supervision divisions with the FCA’s policy and competition functions. Following the appointment of Nikhil Rathi as its chief executive in October, the FCA has now made four further appointments to its executive team.
Stephanie Cohen will be the FCA’s new chief operating officer and will be responsible for the FCA’s operations and business performance, systems and infrastructure, and finances. As COO, Stephanie will play a central part in the FCA’s transformation, taking the lead on operational changes to make the FCA more efficient, dynamic, and technologically driven. Stephanie brings over two decades of experience in large financial services firms, including 14 years at BlackRock where she was global COO.
Jessica Rusu will join the FCA’s as its first chief data, information and intelligence officer. As CDIIO, Jessica will lead the transformation of the FCA’s use of data, intelligence and information to effectively oversee the 60,000 firms it regulates. Jessica will evolve the FCA’s relationship with big tech companies, fintechs and the wider data science community and champion the FCA’s global Innovate agenda. Before taking up her current role as chief data officer at challenger bank Chetwood Financial, Jessica was senior director of finance and analytics at eBay in Europe and has also worked in credit analytics at Ford Motor Company and in stress testing at GE Capital.
Sarah Pritchard will become executive director of markets, responsible for the delivery of the FCA’s statutory market integrity objective in the combined Supervision, Policy and Competition division. Sarah joins from the National Economic Crime Centre, where she is director. Before joining the NECC, Sarah’s career involved stints in a range of government departments in legal and operational roles and in risk and compliance at HSBC.
Emily Shepperd will take up the newly created role of executive firector for authorisations. Emily will oversee authorisations, which is the gateway for firms and individuals applying to undertake regulated financial services activity. Emily was most recently director of customer services and change at Aegon UK and before that EMEA COO for Bank of New York Mellon.
Clare Cole has been acting director of market oversight since December and now takes up the role permanently. She has worked at the FCA since 2003 and will now be responsible for overseeing the conduct of participants in the primary and secondary markets through the listing, prospectus and market abuse regimes.
Nikhil Rathi said: "I am delighted to be welcoming Stephanie, Jessica, Sarah and Emily into the FCA to be part of our executive leadership team. They bring with them a deep understanding of the consumers we seek to protect, the markets we oversee, and all have track records for operational excellence. As we continue transforming the FCA - building a data-led regulator - their global experience and leadership, drawn from a variety of backgrounds, will be vital in ensuring we can act more quickly to reduce harm to consumers and ensure market integrity.
"I also congratulate Clare on her appointment as director of market oversight, a role she takes on at an important time for UK markets as the FCA takes forward the work of Lord Hill’s Listings Review.'
