Biography

Chief Curiosity Officer, Dr. Ruth Wandhöfer is an author, speaker, advisor & educator on the digital economy and the future of finance and money, operating at the nexus of data, identity, regulation and technology innovation.

Ruth was named as one of 2010s ‘Rising Stars’ by Financial News; named in Management Today’s 2011 ‘35 Women under 35’ list of women to watch and identified as one of the 100 Most Influential People in Finance 2012 by the Treasury Risk Magazine. She received the ‘Women in Banking and Finance Award for Achievement’ in 2015 and in 2016, 2017 and 2018 she was named on the global ‘Women in Fintech Powerlist’ of Innovate Finance. She is a 2018, 2019, 2020 and 2024 Top 10 Global Fintech Influencer (Fintech Power 50). She was named as a Senior Leader on the Innovate Finance Women Powerlist 2020, 2021, 2022 and 2023.

Professional Bio

Dr. Ruth Wandhöfer has been instrumental in shaping the future of finance during her impressive career over the last 22 years. She operates at the nexus of finance, technology and regulation and is passionate about creating the digital financial ecosystem of the future. She is a very influential female leader in the technology space, promoting the understanding, deployment and business models of our digital future across financial markets and processes. 

With a diverse career across regulatory policy development, banking, Fintech/Regtech mentoring, investing and consulting she finds herself at the centre of the evolving digital ecosystem of players with the ability to advise, accelerate, promote and enable technology players to become an integral part of the new financial ecosystem.  

Ruth began her career in banking. After a distinguished career of over a decade with Citi, Ruth was an independent Non-Executive Director (INED) on the boards of the London Stock Exchange Group and Digital Identity Net as well as senior advisor at KPMG. She was a Partner at Gauss Ventures, a VC firm focused on early stage FinTech investments between 2018 and 2023. She is currently an INED on the boards of Permanent TSB, Aquis Exchange Group and RTGS.global.

In December 2020 Ruth was appointed by HM Treasury in the UK as Chair of the Payment Systems Regulator Statutory Panel and served her term until November 2023. She currently serves as Chair of the Bank of England Digital Sterling Privacy Working Group.

She is also a Strategic Adviser of the European Third Party Provider Association (ETPPA) and in that regard also advises the European Central Bank on the topic of the Digital Euro.

Ruth was named as one of 2010s ‘Rising Stars’ by Financial News; named in Management Today’s 2011 ‘35 Women under 35’ list of women to watch and identified as one of the 100 Most Influential People in Finance 2012 by the Treasury Risk Magazine. She received the ‘Women in Banking and Finance Award for Achievement’ in 2015 and in 2016, 2017 and 2018 she was named on the global ‘Women in Fintech Powerlist’ of Innovate Finance. She is a 2018, 2019, 2020 and 2024 Top 10 Global Fintech Influencer (Fintech Power 50). She was named as Senior Leader on the global  Women in Fintech Powerlist of Innovate Finance in 2020-2023.

She speaks five languages, has completed studies in Financial Economics (MA, UK), International Politics (MA, FR) and an LLM in International Economic Law (UK). She was awarded a doctorate by CASS Business School, London and Tilburg University in 2019 for her PhD thesis in Finance on the topic of “Technology Innovation in Financial Markets”.

She published three books: “EU Payments Integration” (2010), “Transaction Banking and the Impact of Regulatory Change” (2014) and “Redecentralisation – building our digital financial ecosystem” (2023) and she is a Visiting Professor of Bayes (formerly CASS) Business School City University London and a Visiting Professor at the London Institute of Banking and Finance.

Her views are widely sought after in the global press, and her opinions have been published in Sifted, FT and Forbes, to name just a few publications. 

She balances this extraordinary career while raising her children and championing for a better work life balance for parents and more support for women entrepreneurs. 

Research Interests

Financial Market Infrastructures; International Banking; Financial Stability; Prudential Bank Regulation and Supervision; Payments; Open Banking; Competition; Distributed Ledger Technology; implications of technology innovation on banking sector; digital assets ecosystem and tokenisation; DeFi; digital identity; AI.

Teaching

Other Activities

• Advisory Board Member B2C2 (2017 – 2021)

• Mentor to FinTech Accelerators Start-up-Bootcamp and EY Accelerator (2015 – 2018)

• Member of the Editorial Board of the ‘Journal of Payment Systems & Strategy’, Henry Stewart (ongoing)

• Member of the Editorial Board of the ‘Journal of Digital Banking’, Henry Stewart (ongoing)