David Link is the Executive Chairman of the Verrency Group. He previously served as a Managing Director of Accenture’s Financial Services practice where for over 26 years he served in various senior leadership positions across the US, Europe and Asia. He has significant experience across all areas of financial services including payments and digital innovations. He also currently sits on a number of other boards and advisory boards.
Jeremy McLaughlin is an associate in the firm’s San Francisco office and a member of the Consumer Financial Services group. His practice focuses on regulatory compliance and enforcement for Fintech and consumer financial products and services, with particular attention on emerging payments, payment systems, and prepaid products.
Mr. McLaughlin represents a broad range of clients across the financial services industry, ranging from startups to some of the world’s largest financial institutions. They have included money services businesses, payment system providers, banks, retailers, marketplace lenders, Fintech companies (including blockchain technology companies), crypto/virtual currency providers, credit and prepaid card companies, and mortgage lenders and servicers.
Mr. McLaughlin counsels clients on compliance with state and federal consumer protection laws, money transmitter laws, international remittances, anti-money laundering laws, abandoned property laws, and network rules, as well as advising on privacy, data security, and credit and licensed lending laws. He assists clients with negotiating and drafting agreements involving payment technologies and licensing issues, drafting terms and conditions and disclosures for new products, and structuring business operations to maximize efficiency and comply with legal obligations. He also serves as regulatory counsel in connection with investments, including conducting due diligences of payments, credit, and mortgage companies.
Mr. McLaughlin also maintains an appeals and issues practice, handling appeals and dispositive motions before state and federal courts, including proceedings involving consumer financial laws. He has prepared over 10 briefs for the US Supreme Court, and dozens of briefs for a variety of federal and state appellate courts. He has argued before the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.
Mr. McLaughlin is a regular contributor to the FinTech Law Blog and the Consumer Financial Services Watch Blog.
Greg Smith is a Managing Director at FT Partners and has over 20 years of experience in the financial services industry. Prior to joining FT Partners, Greg spent the majority of his career as an award-winning equity research analyst at Merrill Lynch, J.P Morgan and other firms covering companies across the financial services and FinTech landscape. Throughout his career, Greg has played a senior role in numerous investment banking transactions spanning financings, M&A and IPOs. Greg has long been a thought leader in FinTech and has frequently been quoted in the press and appeared often on CNBC and Bloomberg TV.
Pete Donat is Founder of Commerce Technology Partners, a consultancy advising Banking and FinTech clients in growth, M&A, partnership, expansion, litigation and regulatory issues. He is also a part time Head of Partnerships at Earnest Research, a data and analytics firm focused on monetizing payment industry data. He was SVP of New Ventures and Business Development at First Data from 2013 to 2017, with responsibility for establishing and managing the company's most disruptive partnerships - such as enablement of ApplePay, partnership with PayPal and dozens of investments, acquisitions and partnerships with early stage FinTech startups. Prior roles at First Data, included roles in Network Innovation, eCommerce and chair of First Data's Durbin and Regulatory response teams. Prior to FDC, he was VP of Corporate Strategy at Visa. Earlier, he held a variety of senior management roles at MasterCard, including leadership roles in Product Management, Change Management, e-Business Development, and Corporate Strategy. He has served as Board Advisor to several payment and security startups. He and his wife have real world small business experience operating one of Silicon Valley's leading Fitness Studios.
Jean Michel is the Founder and CEO of Crowdfunder, a leading equity crowdfunding platform.
Previously, he was the COO of Stock Circles, an AI-driven auto trading platform.
Prior to becoming an entrepreneur, Jean-Michel worked for Microsoft where he participated in the launch of the search engine Bing.
JM has been advising numerous founders and startups over the years and made investments in WOSH, Helpr and Stample. He is passionate about Entrepreneurship and those who build things.
Andrew Glass advises businesses in achieving integrated, multi-disciplinary solutions to managing risk. Mr. Glass and his project teams work closely with clients’ business lines, and their legal, compliance, and information technology departments, to navigate complex regulatory areas. Mr. Glass provides regulatory-compliance advice and policy and procedure review. He oversees audits and internal investigations and responds to government investigations. Mr. Glass defends complex litigation including class actions. He counsels companies in the financial services, energy, media and telecommunications, manufacturing, and consumer product industries. His multi-faceted approach to problem-solving delivers seamless solutions to clients’ legal challenges.
Judith Rinearson is a partner in the firm’s New York and London offices. Ms. Rinearson concentrates her practice in prepaid and emerging payment systems, electronic payments, crypto/virtual currencies, reward programs, ACH and check processing. She has more than 25 years of experience in the financial services industry, including 18 years at American Express’s General Counsel’s Office. Her expertise focuses particularly in the areas of emerging payments and compliance with state and federal consumer protection laws, anti-money laundering laws, state money transmitter licensing laws and abandoned property laws.
Ms. Rinearson currently serves on the Advisory Board of the UK’s Emerging Payments Association (EPA), and previously served on the Board of the UK’s Prepaid International Forum (PIF) where she is still an active contributor. She has also served for 8 years as Regulatory Counsel for the Network Branded Prepaid Card Association (NBPCA) in the U.S., and as Chair of the NBPCA’s Government Relations Working Group, and in that role represented the NBPCA at the Bank Secrecy Act Advisory Group (BSAAG) in Washington DC.
She has long been a member of the American Bar Association’s Cyberspace Law Committee, where she has previously chaired the Payment Card Fraud Task Force.
Over the years, Ms. Rinearson has garnered many honors. In 2015, she was named one of the Top 10 Payment Lawyers, by Paybefore magazine and in the same year was voted as one of the most Influential Women in Payments at the same publication. In March 2008, she was honored with an Industry Achievement Award from the 2008 Prepaid Card Expo for her contributions as a pioneer in the prepaid card industry and her particular influence in the regulation of prepaid cards.
She has also given numerous presentations about payment regulations at meetings held by the Federal Reserve Banks of Philadelphia and Chicago, the Conference of State Bank Supervisors (CSBS), the Electronic Funds Transfer Association, Forum Europe, NACHA, and at annual meetings of the Money Transmitter Regulators Association, American Bar Association and the National Association of Unclaimed Property Administrators. In 2015 and 2016, among other things, Ms. Rinearson presented at the Prepaid International Forum in London regarding U.S. payment laws; moderated a panel at Money2020 regarding state money transmitter licensing issues; and trained bank examiners regarding prepaid cards and emerging payments including crypto-currencies such as Bitcoin, Etherium and Ripple. She also testified at the January 2014 Virtual Currency Hearings before the New York State Department of Financial Services regarding regulation of virtual and crypto currencies.
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