Ambassadors - Transparency Task Force

Raphael Douady

Raphael Douady is a French mathematician and economist specializing in data science, financial mathematics and chaos theory at the University of Paris I-Panthéon-Sorbonne.

He formerly held the Frey Chair of quantitative finance at Stony Brook University and was academic director of the French Laboratory of Excellence on Financial Regulation.

He earned his PhD in Hamiltonian dynamics and has more than 20 years of experience in the financial industry. He has particular interest in researching portfolio risks, for which he has developed especially suited powerful nonlinear statistical and data science models, as well as macroeconomics and systemic risk.

Raphael founded fin tech firms Riskdata (risk management for the buyside) and Datacore (quantitative portfolio of ETFs) and is Chief Science Officer of Matrics (AI for the buy-side). Douady is a member of the Praxis Club, a New York-based think tank advising the French government on its economic policy and sits on the board and the investment committee of Friends of IHES, a foundation supporting the Institut des Hautes Etudes Scientifiques (the French brother of Princeton IAS).

He is an alumni of Ecole Normale Supérieure in Paris and was awarded a gold medal at the International Mathematical Olympiads.

Larry Elford

Larry is founder of InvestorAdvocates.ca in Canada, which seeks to understand motivations that warp financial systems from being of service to the public, to becoming a dangerous drain upon the public.

After spending two decades as a retail broker in Canada’s largest banks it became imperative to understand what was seen as a pandemic of professional financial abuse. He has testified to parliamentary committees four times in the last decade and is a consulting director to the Small Investor Protection Association of Canada, www.SIPA.ca.

Larry is also an author and film producer. He was included in John Lawrence Reynolds’ second edition bestselling book, The Naked Investor, Why Almost Everybody But You Gets Rich On Your RRSP, and Bruce Livesey’s Best Seller, Thieves of Bay Street, How Banks, Brokerages and the Wealthy Steal Billions from Canadians. He produced a documentary film titled “Breach of Trust, The Unique Violence of White Collar Crime”, to benefit investors, legislators and those who investigate financial crime.

What he has observed over the last two decades of the 1900s, and the first two decades of the 21st-century, is condensed into a book titled “ABOUT YOUR FINANCIAL MURDER…”, to be released March 2018. The book argues that organized acts by financial professionals, drains North America by as much money as ALL other criminal acts combined.

Larry is a director of the Canadian Justice Review Board, an advisory group which brings independent oversight to the state of affairs of justice systems. His interest springs from decades of observed investment regulatory capture, and financial industry capture of related professions including elements of justice and law.

Interested persons are invited to join and to share experiences and solutions on social media:

Facebook group for Fraud victims Canada, Australia, the UK, US and beyond.

https://www.facebook.com/groups/InvestmentSystemFraud/

Twitter: @RecoveredBroker

LinkedIn: Larry Elford

YouTube Film and Video work: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCy8dpTRZHEz-0JBa_l0w7AQ

Larry Bates

Larry Bates is a former banker turned investor advocate, author, and speaker. Larry spent over thirty years in the investment business with prominent institutions in Toronto, Canada and London, England including as Global Head of Debt Capital Markets for RBC Capital Markets.

Over the course of his career, Larry both collaborated with and advised many of the world’s most sophisticated investors and financial institutions.

Larry founded the website wealthgame.ca in 2017 and has written a book, to be published in late 2018, aimed at helping average investors understand how to achieve better outcomes.

Larry is currently a member of the Investor Advisory Panel of the Ontario Securities Commission.

He is also an active member of TTF’s Team Americas.

Paul Bates

Paul Bates is a Canadian senior litigation counsel with 35+ years of experience in complex commercial litigation. Paul is also a member of the UK Bar, and professionally associated with Outer Temple Chambers in the London, U.K.

Paul maintains an extensive practice in financial services, including collective redress, with an emphasis on retail and institutional investor compensation for regulatory contraventions by financial institutions and intermediaries.

Paul serves as a member of the Ontario Securities Commission Investor Advisory Panel to assist the Commission to identify investor interests in Canadian regulatory developments. Paul also leads competition claims for consumer redress.

John Degoey

John J. De Goey, CFP, CIM, FELLOW OF FPSC™ is a Portfolio Manager with Wellington Altus Private Wealth in Toronto. He enjoys a national reputation as an authority on professional, transparent and evidence-based financial advice. A frequent commentator on financial matters, he has written for a number of media sources including Advisor’s Edge Report, Canadian MoneySaver, MoneySense, The Globe and Mail and The National Post.

He has also made numerous appearances on a variety of television programs, including CBC’s Marketplace, News World and The National, BNN’s Market Call, and CTV’s Canada AM. In 2003, John released his groundbreaking book, The Professional Financial Advisor, which was subsequently updated in 2006, 2012 and 2016. His new book, “STANDUP to the Financial Services Industry” is due to be released in early 2019.

John is a recipient of the National Multi-Media Award conferred by the Canadian Association of Financial Planners; is the Past President of the CAFP’s Toronto Chapter; and is one of only 70 Canadians to be recognized as a FELLOW OF FPSC™ for his contribution to the advancement of financial planning in Canada. In both 2014 and 2015, Wealth Professional Magazine named him one of the Top 50 Advisors in Canada. In 2017, John received the coveted Donald J. Johnston Award for Lifetime Contribution to financial planning in Canada from the Financial Planning Standards Council.

John has spoken at numerous conferences throughout Canada as well as in Ireland, the United States, and the Caribbean and has lectured on behalf of the Canadian Securities Institute. You can follow him on Twitter at: @STANDUP_Today

Benoît Lallemand

Benoît is the Secretary General of Finance Watch, the NGO dedicated to making finance serve society.

He was one of the association’s first hires in 2011 as a senior policy analyst (in charge of MiFID 2). He was also a senior advisor to Better Markets on EU affairs and head of strategic development and operations.

Benoît initiated the Citizens’ Dashboard of Finance and the Change Finance coalition, platforms allowing a broad range of stakeholders, including pioneers in sustainable businesses and financial services, academics and civil society organizations to engage on a global campaign to change finance.

Before joining Finance Watch, Benoît spent more than ten years in the financial sector – more specifically in clearing and settlement (market infrastructure). He was initially a team leader before holding senior positions in asset-servicing departments, focusing on fixed income and structured products primary markets and regulatory reporting. He was then in charge of several business steering committees and strategic projects. Benoît also has roots in the NGO world as a co-founder of ATTAC-Bruxelles.

Ian Fryer

Ian is an actuary and has been heavily involved in Australia’s superannuation and pension industry for over 20 years in a range of actuarial, administration, consulting and research roles.

For the last 12 years he has been Head of Research at Chant West, a leading superannuation consultancy and research firm established in 1997. Chant West’s research on superannuation and pension funds is highly regarded for its accuracy, insightfulness and integrity, and it is widely used by financial advisers and by the funds themselves.

The research feeds into a suite of user-friendly tools that make it easy for funds, advisers and individual consumers to analyse and compare products on a fair, ‘apples with apples’ basis.

Ian is is responsible for managing a team that provides product research used by a large number of superannuation funds, financial advisers and consumers to compare superannuation and pension products.

A key area of concern for Chant West is to ensure that products are compared on a like-for-like basis, which is a challenge given inconsistent disclosure by funds in Australia. Ian and Chant West have long advocated for improved disclosure of fees, insurance and investment performance in the Australian environment.

Dr David Knox

David is a Senior Partner at Mercer and Senior Actuary for the Pacific region. He is the National Leader for Research and Policy in Australia and the actuary to the Tasmanian and Western Australian public sector superannuation plans.

He was the industry expert of the three person team who conducted a review of Military Superannuation for the Australian Government and is the lead author of the Melbourne Mercer Global Pension Index.

Before joining Mercer, David was at PricewaterhouseCoopers and prior to that was the Foundation Professor of Actuarial Studies at The University of Melbourne. In his two decades in academia, he acted as a consultant to a range of financial organisations, in both the private and public sectors, specialising in the superannuation and retirement incomes area. He has spoken and written widely in this area and has served on many Government and industry committees.

David was an independent Board member of Australian Prudential Regulation Authority for five years and President of the Institute of Actuaries of Australia in 2000.

Dr. Nicholas Morris

Dr. Morris is an Adjunct Professor of the law faculties of UNSW, Sydney, and Latrobe, Melbourne; a visiting fellow at the Martin School, Oxford; and a guest professor at the China Executive Leadership Academy, Pudong, China.

He has been Deputy Director of the UK Institute for Fiscal Studies; Chief Executive and Chairman of various economic consultancies including London Economics; a visiting fellow at Balliol and St Anthony’s Colleges in Oxford, and at Melbourne University; and has led numerous projects in developing countries.

Dr. Morris is the co-editor of ‘Capital Failure: Rebuilding Trust in Financial Services’, published by OUP in 2014, and author of ‘Management and Regulation of Pension Schemes: Australia, A Cautionary Tale’, published by Routledge in 2018.

Gordon Noble

Gordon Noble is Head of Policy and Advocacy at the Australian Sustainable Finance Initiative and an Associate at The Blended Capital Group.

Gordon was one of the first employees of the United Nations backed Principles for Responsible Investment. Collaborating with a group of responsible investors Gordon was responsible for founding the Responsible Investment Academy, a global online training platform that educates investors on incorporating environmental, social and governance issues into investment processes which is now the PRI Academy.

He represented the superannuation industry on the ASX Corporate Governance Council and worked with the Australian Council of Superannuation Investors to develop a framework to benchmark the sustainability reporting of Australian listed companies. As director of government relations and strategy with the Association of Superannuation Funds of Australia he worked on a broad range of superannuation policy issues.

Over a 25 year career Gordon has worked in investment management, banking, industrial relations, and as a political adviser and trade union official.