Samantha Emery

Samantha is a seasoned executive and NED with unique experience spanning tier-one banks, prominent fintechs and major regulators exploring the future of financial services.

Her most recent role at Lloyds Banking Group (LBG) has seen her leading the strategic direction on payments, including driving payments strategy, fostering payments partnerships and managing the Group’s external relationships across the payments industry and regulators. Enterprise operational responsibilities including domestic and international payments settlement, liquidity and scheme management, payments design consultancy, and payments policy compliance.

Previously, Samantha held roles at the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), leading in both payments supervision and the regulator’s globally recognised innovation agenda. Prior to this, Samantha held several senior positions at NatWest/RBS in Global Transaction Services (GTS) leading on digital innovation, strategy design, transformation, and regulatory change.

Samantha has served a term as a Director of Swift SC, also serving as the Board’s Deputy Chair. She has experience as a shareholder representative, board member and advisor to fintechs (Form3, Fnality). A constructive and impactful voice in industry groups, Samantha is the WIBF UK Leadership Council member for AI, Tech, Digital and previously chaired the UK Finance National Payments Vision work stream. Samantha is an active spokesperson on inclusion, diversity and allyship, committed to keeping conversations live, relevant and action-oriented.

A proponent of life-long learning, Samantha is also currently studying strategic business applications of AI at the University of Oxford. An explorer by nature, outside of work she travels extensively; enjoys languages, reading, and music; and still occasionally finds time to lace up her rugby boots.