UK’s FCA Names Five Senior Managers

The UK’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has made five senior appointments to its executive team including a new head of Markets.

The UK regulator announced a restructure at the end of 2020 and has now named Stephanie Cohen as chief operating officer (COO), Jessica Rusu as its first chief data, information and intelligence officer (CDIIO), Sarah Pritchard as executive director, Markets, and Emily Shepperd who will take up the newly created role of executive director, authorisations. All four will sit on the FCA’s executive committee.

The FCA has also appointed Clare Cole as director of market oversight and as part of that role she will lead the FCA’s response to Lord Hill’s forthcoming Listings Review.

Cohen will be responsible for the FCA’s operations and business performance, systems and infrastructure, and finances. As COO, she 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.

She brings over two decades of experience in large financial services firms, including 14 years at BlackRock where she was the global COO for the active equity businesses and the Alpha Strategies division, comprising active equities and fixed income.

Rusu will lead the transformation of the FCA’s use of data, intelligence and information to effectively oversee the 60,000 firms it regulates. She 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 Chetwood Financial, a digital challenger bank, Rusu was senior director of finance & analytics at eBay in Europe where she built out their advanced analytics and customer insight function. She has also worked in credit analytics at Ford Motor Company and in stress testing at GE Capital.

Pritchard will be responsible for the delivery of the FCA’s statutory market integrity objective in the combined Supervision, Policy and Competition division. She joins from the UK’s National Economic Crime Centre, where she is director. Before joining the NECC, Pritchard’s career involved stints in a range of government departments in legal and operational roles and in risk and compliance at HSBC. She will join in June and will work alongside Sheldon Mills, who was appointed executive director, consumers and competition in December, in leading the Supervision, Policy and Competition division.

Shepperd will join the FCA in March to oversee Authorisations, which is the gateway for firms and individuals applying to undertake regulated financial services activity. She was most recently director of customer services and change at Aegon UK and before that EMEA COO for Bank of New York Mellon. During her time at BNY Mellon, Shepperd chaired AFME’s technology and operations group.

“[The four] 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,” says Nikhil Rathi, chief executive of the FCA. “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.”