< Fintech's Most Powerful Dealmakers of 2016

30. Hyder Jaffrey
Head, Strategic Investment and Fintech Innovation
UBS
PNR

The recent resignation of UBS senior innovation manager Alex Batlin (No. 28 last year) brought Hyder Jaffrey into the fintech spotlight at the Swiss banking giant, which has gained renown as a promoter of start-up activity and an advocate of blockchain technology. “I enjoy being an instigator of change,” says Jaffrey, a six-year UBS veteran based in London. After initially working on the UBS Neo multiasset trading platform, he turned his attention to blockchain and distributed ledger in 2014. As head of strategic investment and fintech innovation, the 52-year-old currently splits his time between the investment bank and UBS’s Crypto 2.0 lab at the Level39 accelerator in Canary Wharf. “The role today focuses on business model innovation — how capital markets business models can be innovated through the use of financial technology,” he says. In August, Banco Santander, Bank of New York Mellon Corp., Deutsche Bank, and ICAP joined UBS’s Utility Settlement Coin project for blockchain-based settlement of securities transactions. Jaffrey sees the effort as part of a medium- to long-term “evolution of a market space, but it is absolutely fundamental for seeing the benefits of the distributed ledger technologies that many people are talking about now.” Separately, UBS last year held a Future of Finance Challenge, offering prizes that included $50,000 to the winning entrepreneur, algorithm testing and analysis company Aesthetic Integration. This year UBS joined with Credit Suisse and other Swiss companies in supporting a fintech initiative within Zurich’s Kickstart Accelerator. Jaffrey knows entrepreneurship firsthand. After graduating from Loughborough University in the U.K. in 1988, he went into computer systems development and consulting. Melding those skills with a growing familiarity with financial markets, in 2002 he became CEO of start-up, web-based debt issuance platform Marketpipe. In 2007 the company was acquired by data and analytics provider Ipreo; Jaffrey stayed on as global head of fixed income until 2009 — just as the fintech phenomenon was beginning to take off.

 
The 2016 Fintech Finance 35

1. Jonathan Korngold General Atlantic 2. Matthew Harris Bain Capital Ventures 3. Jane Gladstone Evercore Partners Gold and Bitcoin Decouple. What's Driving the Divergence's? Sponsored by CME Group April 24, 2025 4. James Robinson III & James Robinson IV RRE Ventures 5. Steven McLaughlin Financial Technology Partners 6. Amy Nauiokas & Sean Park Anthemis Group

7. Richard Garman & Brad Bernstein FTV Capital 8. Gerard von Dohlen Broadhaven Capital Partners 9. Darren Cohen Goldman Sachs Group 10. Hans Morris Nyca Partners 11. Meyer (Micky) Malka Ribbit Capital 12. Maria Gotsch Partnership Fund for New York City

13. Barry Silbert Digital Currency Group 14. Jay Reinemann Propel Venture Partners 15. Mariano Belinky Santander InnoVentures 16. Justin Brownhill & Neil DeSena SenaHill Partners 17. François Robinet AXA Strategic Ventures 18. Vanessa Colella Citi Ventures

19. Michael Schlein Accion International 20. Kenneth Marlin Marlin & Associates 21. Rumi Morales CME Ventures 22. Alastair (Alex) Rampell Andreessen Horowitz 23. Steve Gibson Euclid Opportunities 24. Fabian Vandenreydt SWIFT

25. Vladislav Solodkiy Life.SREDA 26. Gardiner Garrard III TTV Capital 27. Nektarios Liolios Startupbootcamp Fintech 28. Lawrence Wintermeyer Innovate Finance 29. Bina Kalola Bank of America Merrill Lynch 30. Hyder Jaffrey Fintech Innovation

31. Calvin Choi AMTD Group 32. Janos Barberis FinTech Hong Kong 33. Jalak Jobanputra Future Perfect Ventures 34. Sopnendu Mohanty Monetary Authority of Singapore 35. Oskar Mielczarek de la Miel Rakuten FinTech Fund