MFSG
Google Pay and explored the potential of blockchain technology for retail banking. She later moved into capital markets and then served as Chief Technology and Data Officer for a Canadian pension fund before joining MFSG.
Greg Root, MFSG’ s Chief Operating Officer, brings a similarly broad background. He spent seven years at Canada’ largest telco, before moving into fintech through stints at D & H and Finastra.
Together, the two executives are leading a significant transformation programme at MFSG. Their mandate: modernise the business, expand its product set and do so in a way that is both commercially ambitious and rigorously compliant.
“ Marrying technology and strategy is much harder than just building good tech solutions,” Karina says.“ There’ s no shortage of amazing ideas when it comes to emerging technology. The hardest part is matching them to the business where it counts.”
Greg frames the challenge in terms of people, process and technology. He is also clear about where the biggest risks lie – not just in systems, but in culture. Greg notes that:“ The biggest challenge is continuing to drive our customer-focused culture while we adopt new technologies.” That interplay between culture and technology sits at the heart of how MFSG approaches risk. Both executives are emphatic that at MFSG risk is understood as something that must be embedded in every decision, at every level of the business.
“Compliance is key. We are in financial services, and there are always changing parts within the regulatory landscape”
Greg Root Chief Operating Officer MFSG
Karina explains that MFSG has adopted what she describes as a multi-layer risk framework. This integrates credit risk fraud risk, regulatory risk and operational risk. Executive oversight sits at the top of this structure, but the day-today responsibility for monitoring and managing those risks is distributed across operational teams throughout the business.“ Data risk management is not just one leader’ s job,” she says.“ It is all of our jobs.”
Greg points to an often overlooked but critical element of that framework: education. Managing risk effectively, he argues, requires that frontline staff – the people working in retail branches, call centres and back-office processing teams – understand not just what the rules are, but why they matter.“ We believe people will buy into things when
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