The 2024
FINANCE ANALYTICS SUMMIT

Total Finance Magazine Presents a One-Day, Senior Executive Forum for CFOs, VP of Finance, Lending, Payments, Treasury and other C-Suite Leaders
entrusted with data-driven operations.

OBA Conference Centre in Toronto
20 Toronto Street |
December 2, 2024

An All-Keynote Senior Executive Forum, located in the heart of the financial district, each individual speaker will addresses all delegates in a top-level format that ensures all attendees get the most impactful insights. Speakers will share deep-dives on data-driven finance, including (but not limited to) analytics, forecasting, scenario planning, capital allocation, cloud solutions, cybersecurity, digital transformation and AI-Powered solutions.

Leaders in all aspects of data-driven finance will examine the workings of today’s finance role and reveal the near-future in the ever-expanding, analytics-powered C-Suite. The universal torrent of data available today has become the foundational tool of informed decision making for finance in all business sectors. Data and the evaluation of data connects across department and functions. CFOs and their teams are increasingly responsible for unlocking the value for more than just finance.
Each one-hour presentation will explore and reveal real-world, actionable paths to enable all aspects of the transformative power of data and analytics in finance. Each will examine a specific topic.

CONFERENCE TIMETABLE & AGENDA

7:45 am | Registration, Breakfast, Networking
8:30 am | Welcoming Remarks, Morning Keynote
9:30 am to 12:30 pm | Super Session Keynotes

12:35 pm | Luncheon, Networking | Afternoon Keynote
2:00 pm to 5:00 pm| Super Session Keynotes
5:00 pm to 5:30 pm | Panel Discussion | Networking

PARTIAL SPEAKER SESSSION DESCRIPTIONS (More to Come)

Benchmarking Machine Learning for E-Commerce Fraud Management: E-commerce fraud has grown dramatically over the past five years. On average, merchants in North America spend about 10 percent of their e-commerce revenue on fraud management. Machine learning (ML) has become increasingly important to merchants for fraud management, and almost two thirds of merchants in north America use third party data and analysis for ML-based fraud management. However, not all ML techniques are equal, and performance benchmarking ML algorithms is critical to evaluate their effectiveness. It is also pivotal in establishing the business case for fraud management. This session describes the techniques used to benchmark machine learning algorithms of several third-party fraud prediction services. It examines some of the key metrics that are important in benchmarking ML algorithms and highlights some of the challenges that need to be addressed in benchmarking.

SPEAKER: Christie Christelis, President, Total Strategies International, Canadian Payments Insights. Christelis is the founder and president of Technology Strategies International Inc. (TSI), a Canadian technology market research and strategy consulting firm. He is Canada’s leading payments industry analyst and has been tracking developments in the Canadian payments industry for more than twenty five years. In the payments sector, Christie has provided advisory services to clients on EMV implementation, virtual currencies, fintech, mobile payments and wallets, P2P payments, debit payments, smart cards, payments and loyalty programs, simulating payments markets, and benchmarking machine learning algorithms for e-commerce authentication. He has also conducted payments market studies on payments markets in Canada, USA, Europe, Tunisia and South Africa. TSI publishes the Canadian Payments Forecast and Canadian Consumer Payments Survey on an annual basis and has conducted foresight reports on virtual currencies, BNPL and tokenization. He has presented papers on the adoption of advanced payments technologies at payments conferences in Canada, USA, UK, Australia and South Africa.

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Next Generation Payments Technologies as a Key Enabler of Finance Analytics: The retail and commercial payments sectors have for decades followed a secular trend for the inclusion of increasing financial and related data in core retail and commercial payments processes. This session will provide an in-depth review of the additional business data that can be generated or captured by next generation payments technologies. These technologies include EMV2, tokenization and ISO20022. This session will also identify the resulting opportunities and threats in data analytics for key actors in the payments ecosystem as a result of these extended data capabilities. Example impacts include the changed roles of issuers and networks, and the emergence of new front-end and back-end data service providers. This session will also discuss the potential role of artificial intelligence (AI), focusing on how AI can support the design of new payments and accounts products and services that leverage from the capture of expanded payments data.

SPEAKER: Michael J. Vaselenak, CEO, VCS Technologies Inc. A specialist in product management and business development for payments and transactional systems, with three decades of experience, Vaselenak has defined payments product strategies, advised on product opportunities and risks, and specified or proposed software and services under those strategies for leading Canadian, U.S. and international corporations including Canadian top tier banks, national merchants, MasterCard Canada, loyalty and gift card program providers, Canada Post, Ericsson, Microsoft, IBM, Teleglobe, Telus, Telpay, Everlink, card program managers, credit unions, and federal and provincial governments. Additional clients include Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, Aconite, Government of Northwest Territories and the World Bank agency, IFC.

He founded and lead companies that developed and then operated advanced transaction processing solutions including proprietary account card networks, special purpose POS terminals, extended transaction set authorization and adjudication, and ecommerce merchant and supply chain applications. These solutions were provided for Gulf Canada, Petro Canada, Manulife, Aetna, Prudential, Metlife, as well as medical professional associations and others.

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AI at the Forefront: The Use Cases of Today and Tomorrow. In this session, André will discuss how key AI use cases are transforming banks and insurers from the inside out. He will cover how these use cases will enable both to keep pace with digital challengers and neobanks, as well as customers’ increasing digital expectations, as they move beyond the AI ideation and testing phase to scale their AI implementations organization wide. Some examples of use cases he will discuss include AI-powered software development, fraud detection virtual assistants, and autonomous agents.

SPEAKER: André Gagné, CEO, GFT Canada. André Gagné joined the company in 2013 as a solution architect and has a long and successful track record. He quickly progressed to the management team and then became Vice President of the Development Center. CEO of the global GFT Group, Marika Lulay, emphasized: “We want our clients to be confident that they have exceptional transformation partners at their side. Gagné is indeed a proven leader and I am delighted we make this appointment from within our own organization.”

Among his major accomplishments are his contribution to the realization of large-scale projects for major insurers, the establishment of GFT Canada’s insurance center of excellence and his contribution to the company’s international reputation. GFT Canada has been growing at an annual rate of over 20 percent for the past 11 years. In particular, Mr. Gagné wishes to take advantage of the accelerating digital shift in the financial sector to consolidate GFT Canada’s presence in insurance and the Canadian banking sector.


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Session Description to Come:

SPEAKER: Leslie Cant, Product Marketing Director, CCH® Tagetik, Walters Kluwer. As Product Marketing Director, Leslie is responsible for the global product marketing strategy including product positioning, analyst relationships, content creation, sales enablement, and thought leadership. Leslie joined CCH Tagetik in 2017 after spending 14 years in the Corporate Performance Management and Corporate Tax markets helping clients streamline their financial processes in her various roles in Product Marketing, Product Management and Client Services. 

(Additional speaker announcements coming shortly)

The OBA Conference Centre at 20 Toronto Street (King & Yonge) is a strategically-located event space that offers one of the most immersive and technologically advanced facilities. Total Finance magazine and our other publications have staged senior-level events at the OBA for many years and always receive warm praise for the choice of venue. There are discounts for group or team registration. The Full Speaker Roster will be announced shortly but if you are interested in speaking please drop me a note to steve@totalfinance.ca and I’ll send you the full Speaker Kit and other details about the event, our magazine audience and the expected demographic of the delegates.

Got questions? Let me know and I’ll get back to you quickly.

Steve Lloyd, Publisher & Editor in Chief, Total Finance Magazine.

P: 905-201-6600 | C: 416-919-7076