Leading From the Front - Recognising Outstanding Fintech Leadership at the Finnies 2026
Strong leadership has never been more important in fintech. As the sector continues to evolve at a pace shaped by regulatory change, technological advancement and shifting customer expectations, it is the individuals behind the businesses who ultimately drive meaningful progress.
At this year’s Finnies, BDO is proud to sponsor the Outstanding Fintech Leader of the Year award, recognising those individuals whose vision, influence and execution are helping to shape the future of financial services in Australia and beyond.
Working alongside fintech clients across audit, tax and advisory, BDO sees first-hand the impact that capable, forward-thinking leaders can have, not only within their own organisations, but across the broader market. From setting strategic direction to fostering innovation and building trusted relationships, leadership remains a critical enabler of sustainable growth in a highly dynamic environment.
The Outstanding Fintech Leader of the Year award highlights those who are making a tangible contribution to the industry by scaling new ideas, challenging established models, or strengthening Australia’s position as a globally competitive fintech market. These are leaders who bring together technical expertise, commercial acumen and a clear sense of purpose to deliver lasting impact.
We are pleased to recognise this year’s nominees, whose achievements reflect the strength and maturity of the Australian fintech landscape. Their leadership continues to drive progress, inspire innovation and support the next phase of growth for the sector.
We congratulate all nominees and look forward to celebrating their contributions at this year’s Finnies.
If you’d like to explore how BDO can help your fintech, contact your local BDO fintech experts today, or subscribe to our updates for the latest insights.
Introducing the nominees for the 2026 Outstanding Fintech Leader of the Year award
Alfonso Porcelli, Co-Founder & CEO, DoxAI
DoxAI is one of Australia’s fastest-growing enterprise AI companies, helping organisations become AI-native through secure, intelligent automation. Under Alfonso’s leadership, DoxAI has grown into a global platform with 12 enterprise products and more than 70 AI services, automating the collection, processing, verification, governance and storage of data and documents.
Alfonso’s focus on building enterprise-grade solutions that deliver trusted results in highly regulated environments has driven 74.8% revenue growth, expansion to 59 enterprise clients, and international growth across the United Arab Emirates, North America, Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), India, Italy and New Zealand.
A key milestone has been deploying DoxAI across major financial institutions, reducing document verification from approximately 16 minutes to under 40 seconds, increasing capacity 360 times, improving cost efficiency 16 times, achieving 99.97% accuracy, and delivering more than $4.5 million in savings from 2024 to 2026 for Australia's largest custodian of data and documents.
Alfonso recently led a partnership to deploy Fraud Check AI in New Zealand and expanded growth through the UAE NextGen FDI program. His leadership has contributed to DoxAI being recognised as a 2026 GSI Gold Standard in AI winner for delivering trusted, enterprise-grade artificial intelligence with measurable real-world impact.
Caroline Tran, Co-Founder and CEO of Hello Clever
Hello Clever is an AI-powered global payments platform built on the belief that every transaction a merchant takes should drive growth, not just settle. As Co-Founder and CEO, Caroline leads with candour and radical ownership, trusting her global team to make decisions close to the work.
Caroline has built equity into the company's structure, with half of senior leadership roles held by women (compared to a fintech industry average of 18%), full superannuation paid through parental leave, and a $2,000 annual Access Allowance for female staff.
Under her leadership, Hello Clever has grown into a global, enterprise-grade platform, launching Clever AI, expanding into Japan and the US, and securing an AFSL alongside Visa and Mastercard PayFac status. It became the first fintech in Australia to process a real-world consumer-to-business PayTo transaction and has had more than $2 billion processed across nearly 1,000 merchants in over 22 markets.
Caroline has also been featured in the AFR Fast Starters rankings, the Forbes Asia 100 to Watch, and was the winner of the Female Fintech Leader of the Year award at the 2025 Finnies.
Chris Brycki, Founder & CEO, Stockspot
Stockspot is Australia's first and largest digital investment adviser. As the Founder and CEO, Chris has been on a mission to make investing more accessible, transparent and affordable for everyday Australians since launching the business in 2013.
Today, Stockspot supports thousands of Australians through evidence-based investing and technology-driven advice, offering fee-free kids investing, managed portfolios, superannuation, transition to retirement and pension accounts.
Chris is a leading voice on investing, financial literacy and fintech innovation, a regular national media commentator, and a strong advocate for policies that improve consumer outcomes. Under his leadership, Stockspot has become one of Australia’s most recognised fintech success stories while maintaining a focus on putting clients first.
He is widely respected for challenging industry norms and championing a simpler, fairer approach to investing, demonstrating how technology and sound principles can help more Australians achieve long-term financial security.
Danny Pezeshki, Co-Founder & Chief Operating Officer, Instantia
Instantia is a technology driven global payments and FX risk management company helping businesses better manage FX risk and international payments. As Co-Founder and Chief Operating Officer, Danny’s leadership centres on empowerment, accountability and transparency, building high-performing teams through ownership, autonomy and support.
Danny leads from the front, working alongside his team, maintaining transparency around opportunities, challenges and objectives, and encouraging entrepreneurial thinking, initiative and continuous improvement.
A recent initiative he led is the development and rollout of Instantia’s proprietary FX risk management technology, including one of the first client-facing structured FX option transparency and simulation platforms available to Australian businesses. By enabling clients to model, visualise and understand sophisticated FX strategies in real time, and providing these tools at no additional cost, Instantia has improved transparency and access to institutional-grade risk management, driving onboarding results to 177% of the annual target.
Kym Whitford, General Manager & Director, Asia Pacific, Remitly
Remitly is a NASDAQ listed digital financial services company focused on international money movement. As General Manager and Director, Asia Pacific, Kym leads Remitly’s business across Australia, New Zealand, Singapore and Japan.
Remitly exists to transform the lives of immigrants and their families by providing trusted financial services. For many customers, sending money home supports education, healthcare and everyday living costs, and Kym ensures every decision across product, pricing and payments infrastructure keeps customers at the centre.
A key milestone under Kym’s leadership is Remitly becoming the first of Australia’s top five remittance providers to offer PayTo, delivering fast, low-cost transfers, and Kym is also proud of Remitly’s involvement in community events that directly support their customers.
Kym believes Australia’s fintech sector can drive financial inclusion, increasing accessibility and innovation. At Remitly, this is achieved through products and partnerships that expand access to fast, affordable financial services for global citizens.
Tom Rundle, Chief Product Officer, Azupay
Azupay is an Australian fintech enabling real-time, account-to-account payments for enterprises, platforms and merchants, helping businesses move beyond cards, legacy rails and alternative payment methods to faster, more secure and cost-efficient payment experiences. As Chief Product Officer, Tom Rundle has been instrumental in positioning Azupay as a trusted, enterprise-grade payments infrastructure provider.
Tom translates innovation into scalable, commercially repeatable growth, aligning product strategy with customer needs, regulatory frameworks and a broad partner ecosystem, enabling seamless integration of PayID, PayTo and Pay by Bank across leading platforms such as Adobe Commerce and Clover, alongside a growing network of bank and technology partners.
A defining milestone under Tom’s leadership has been the shift to platform-led distribution, transforming partnerships into scalable acquisition engines across ecommerce and in-store environments. He has championed trust-led innovation, including early adoption of passkeys, and actively contributes to payments policy and regulatory direction across the Australian fintech ecosystem.
Trevor Wistaff, Co-founder and Chief Product Officer, Zepto
Zepto is a fintech reshaping Australia’s account-to-account payments ecosystem. As Co-founder and Chief Product Officer, Trevor’s leadership philosophy focuses on optimising for leaders, not managers, while transforming culture and delivery by empowering teams, removing approval bottlenecks and enabling faster, aligned decision-making to enable rapid innovation without sacrificing strategic alignment.
Under Trevor’s leadership, Zepto has delivered solutions that bridge fast-moving merchant needs and legacy banking infrastructure. Most recently, the launch of Zepto Validate, an intelligent Confirmation of Payee overlay, moved from ideation to delivery in 12 weeks, onboarding dozens of merchant customers and demonstrating unified Product and Engineering collaboration. He also oversaw the PayTo Disputes API, making Zepto the only provider to enable programmatic dispute management.
Beyond delivery, Trevor represents merchant and consumer interests on the AP+ Product and Rules Committee, shaping initiatives including the PayTo liability framework and Confirmation of Payee, and positioning Zepto as major shaper of the payment experiences of the future.
Anish Sinha, Co-Founder & COO, upcover
upcover operates as an AI-native insurance broker and underwriter in Australia’s commercial insurance market for small mid-market and technology businesses, and has been identified as a CB Insights Global Top 50 insurtech.
upcover differentiates itself by being digital-first for customers and AI-native in how it works with more than 80 underwriting partners. Since launching in 2021, upcover has assisted over 70,000 Australian businesses across a wide range of insurance products.
As Co-Founder and COO, Anish’s leadership is grounded in customer obsession, disciplined execution and collaboration across the insurance and fintech ecosystem. He is motivated by building teams and partnerships that push the industry forward and demonstrate how fintech can deliver better outcomes for customers, distributors and insurers.
At upcover, Anish has built a platform that simplifies distribution, improves how businesses understand insurance, and increases efficiency for partners and underwriters. More recently, he has helped lead the expansion of embedded insurance and risk placement capabilities, broadening underwriter access, improving quote optionality and creating new pathways for partners, supporting upcover’s goal to modernise business insurance in Australia by reducing friction, increasing transparency and enabling more businesses to get the protection they need.
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