Today Fnality, the company formed to commercialize the Utility Settlement Coin (USC), announced three new senior staff members who started last month. Gary Chu joins as General Counsel, Adam Clarke as CTO and Daniel Heller as Head of Regulatory Affairs.
The company aims to create an institutional digital currency. Initially, there will be digital versions of five currencies Canadian Dollars, Euros, Pounds, Japanese Yen and US Dollars. The USC is for peer-to-peer on-chain payments for use by financial institutions (only) to make instant settlements with finality. Ultimately the goal is to create a network of decentralized Financial Market Infrastructures (dFMI). The digital currency will be 100% backed by deposits at central banks.
Three months ago the company announced it had raised £50 million ($60.5 million) from 13 banks and Nasdaq. Shareholder banks are Barclays, BNY Mellon, CIBC, Commerzbank, Credit Suisse, ING, KBC Group, Lloyds, MUFG, Santander, SMBC, State Street and UBS.
Gary Chu, the new General Counsel, moves over from UBS which is both a shareholder and USC co-founder. Chu was at Linklaters for three years before his five-year stint at UBS as a Director.
Fnality CEO Rhomaios Ram commented: “Gary brings with him an in-depth understanding of the USC Project. He has been a key member of the former consortium legal team, in his previous role at UBS, contributing to our engagement with central banks, and helping to navigate the project through the initial creation and subsequent growth of the consortium to the establishment of Fnality.”
Incoming CTO Adam Clarke was most recently at Debenhams for two years. Before that he spent a couple of years at UK direct insurer Direct Line. That period was preceded by five years in the banking sector, initially at UBS and after that as a VP at JP Morgan Chase.
“Our aim is to have the first USC live and connected to Use Cases in one currency in the second half of 2020,” said Ram. “‘Adam’s experience in delivering complex projects will be invaluable in ensuring quality delivery; participant integration success and product delivery milestones are met.”
Head of Regulatory Affairs Daniel Heller describes himself as a digital currency and DLT economist. Heller spent more than three years at the IMF in Washington as an Executive Director. And for three years until 2012, he was at the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) as Head of the Secretariat for Committee on Payment and Settlement Systems (CPSS).
Heller is also currently a research fellow at the highly regarded UCL Centre for Blockchain Technologies. And he is CFO for Bitlumens, a decentralized micro power grid.
Additionally in June, Tim Swanson joined Clearmatics as Head of Market Intelligence. He’s been an advisor to the USC co-founder Clearmatics since 2015. And he also had a stint at R3.
Update: Correction to clarify that Tim Swanson joined Clearmatics not Fnality.
