Mr. Andrea Farace

Andrea is an experienced and versatile executive, and former banker, with a global profile having managed businesses in the US, UK, Japan, Italy, Central and Eastern Europe Middle East, Asia and Western Europe.

Andrea began his career in Investment Banking in New York, achieving promotion to Managing Director at Shearson Lehman Hutton (SHL) in seven years. After his time at SHL Andrea moved to private investments with a family fund, before joining Citigroup, where he spent 20 years in various global locations; in customer facing and senior managerial roles, covering Investment Banking, Corporate Banking, Treasury and Trade services, Investor services, Retail and Consumer Banking and Fintech.

Following this Andrea led the divestiture process of the Wirecard Group entities in 20 countries, under the direction of the German court appointed administrator. Since January 2022 Andrea has focused on a portfolio of Board positions and advisory mandates.

Andrea has a distinguished governance background, having been Chairman and CEO of a public quoted company, regulated bank subsidiaries and a non-executive director of several publicly traded and privately held corporations.

Ms. Suzanne Clark

Suzanne has over 25 years’ experience of Internal Auditing across the financial services industry. Suzanne has held senior internal audit roles at the Bank of England and at a number of financial institutions across the retail, investment banking and mutual sectors. She has a deep knowledge of audit, accounting, risk and compliance and the complexities of running large organisations.

Suzanne is a qualified accountant and holds a degree in Mechanical Engineering from Manchester University. Suzanne also brings Board experience from her role as a non-executive Director at Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust, where she Chairs the Audit Committee and has previously Chaired the Digital & IT Committee. Suzanne is also a NON-EXECUTIVE director at The ExeTer which provides life assurance, income protection and private medical insurance.

One of Suzanne’s key strengths is guiding organisations through critical transformations with competing priorities, where Suzanne is able to simplify decision-making and provide clarity, by distilling complex problems down to their critical factors. Another equally important strength of Suzanne, is her strong ethical mind-set, which enables her, as a Board Director, to drive a culture of honesty, trust and professional integrity, that supports organisations not only in achieving their goals, but how they achieve their goals, to ensure authentic outcomes.
Suzanne joined HBL Bank UK Limited on the 1st of November 2022 as an Independent Non-Executive Director and Chair of the Board Audit Committee.

Mr. Khalid Qurashi

Mr. Khalid Qurashi is a retired banker with considerable international banking experience. He has worked for 38 years with a major US international bank, where his area of expertise was in corporate risk management and profit center/franchise management. He was responsible for risk management for the Middle East, Africa and Turkey operations. He contributed materially to overall institutional policy debate and strategy formulation. Before he took over responsibilities as a risk senior, he managed some large country franchises in the Middle East and Africa, where the portfolio encompassed a wide spectrum ranging from large corporates, to governments, to financial institutions as well as SMEs and PE companies.

Mr. Qurashi has previously served on the Board of Directors of Bank Alfalah from May 2015 to February 2018. He has also served as Board member at TMB Pakistan, NMB Bank Zimbabwe, Citibank Nigeria, Vice Chairman, Citi International Islamic Bank Bahrain and as a consultant at HBL Pakistan.

Presently, he is a board member at Bank Alfalah, Pakistan and a member of the investment committee at SIDRA Capital, Saudi Arabia.

He holds a Master’s Degree in Business Administration from IBA/Karachi University.

Mr. Bob Annibale

Bob Annibale is a Senior Fellow at the University of London/(SOAS). He previously held senior corporate, treasury, and risk roles at Citi in London, New York, Athens, Bahrain and Nairobi, including as Citi’s Global Senior Treasury Risk Officer, Regional Treasurer for the Middle East and Africa, and as Global Director of Citi Inclusive Finance and Community Development.

Bob served on the US regulator, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) Chairman’s Advisory Committee on Economic Inclusion. He serves as a non-executive director on the boards of Grameen America, the largest microfinance lender in the US, and Accion, an international non-profit investor and consultant to banks, fintech’s, payment firms and other institutions committed to expanding financial inclusion, and he is chair of Big Issue Changing Lives, a UK social business. Bob serves on the advisory council for the Centre for Financial Inclusion and a number of other organisations.

Mr. Rayomond Kotwal

Mr. Rayomond Kotwal joined HBL as the Chief Financial Officer in 2015.

Prior to joining the Bank, he has held the positions of Chief Financial Officer at United Bank Limited and NIB. He possesses over 33 years of experience. He has also worked as the Chief Financial Officer with Citi in Pakistan and in Canada and with ICI Pakistan during his career. He holds Bachelors and Masters degrees in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA and an MBA in Finance from the Institute of Business Administration, University of Karachi, Pakistan. He is a Director on the Boards of Habib Allied Holdings Ltd, HBL Bank UK, HBL Asset Management Ltd and is Chairman of the First MicroFinance Bank Pakistan. He is also a Trustee of HBL’s Employee Funds and of the HBL Foundation.

Mr. Sagheer Mufti

Sagheer is the Global COO for Habib bank Limited (HBL). He is Responsible for building a corporate culture based on operational excellence & technology capabilities for fulfillment of client services to over 10 million customers HBL serve in 25 countries. He oversees the banks operations, shared services, control functions including cyber security and business continuity, legal, marketing and leads the digital transformation agenda for HBL. He served as the COO for ADIB based in Abu Dhabi for 3 ½ years prior to his current role and also Previously spent 34 years at Citi in different management and leadership roles where he led various enterprise transformation programs and business redesign responsibilities regionally and globally.

Mr. Andreas Ponce de Leon

Andreas is the Chief Executive Officer and a Director of HBL Bank UK, a subsidiary of HBL Pakistan. Andreas joined HBL in January 2018, as the General Manager and Country Head for HBL in the USA, tasked with leading the organization through a challenging and complex business transformation process as part of the bank’s refocused International Strategy.

Prior to HBL, Andreas held senior roles in Finance and Banking including COO of Tradewind Aviation, Global Head of Risk for Citigroup’s AML Operations, and Director of Fraud and Payment Risk for Citi’s North American Cards Franchise.

Andreas has spent a large part of his 25+ years’ experience leveraging his passion for analytics and technology to drive innovation and growth in both Fortune 50 Banks and pre-IPO startups alike.

Andreas holds a Master’s Degree in Technology Management, a Bachelors Degree in Economics from the Wharton School of Business, and a Bachelors Degree in Computer Science, all from the University of Pennsylvania (USA).

Mr David Day

Career HR professional with over 25 years’ experience, gained predominantly within the Financial Services and Financial Technology sectors. Held a number of senior Head of HR and commercial Business Partnering roles throughout his career. David has worked in regional and global capacities covering EMEA, APAC and the Americas, working out of London, Hong Kong and Dublin. David is experienced in HR and Business transformation, culture change and regulation, business partnering, reward, restructuring, talent management, employee engagement and global M & A.

David has been with HBL UK since June 2019 as Head of HR supporting the Bank and the HR function through the continuous changes it needs to make to reach its goals and ambitions. David is also the bank’s company secretary and secretary to the Remuneration and Nominations Committees.