Vision and Mission

Founded in 2005, Agnos Consulting Ltd combines deep cross-border payments knowledge with practical expertise to help clients through the regulatory application process, onto live operations, and beyond.

Steven Faulkner

Cross-Border Payments Pioneer

Steven Faulkner conducts each assignment personally. He does not delegate work to others or outsource. Steven has over thirty years experience in securities services operations, global securities network management at HSBC Bank PLC and global nostro network management at JPMorgan Chase Bank N.A. For the last 20 years Steven has completed a variety of assignments in Africa, North America and South Asia. More recently Steven has been engaged by regulated non-bank financial institutions.

Following a posting in Lagos Nigeria, Steven launched one of the very first digital remittance services into Nigeria followed by Bangladesh with BRAC (the world's largest NGO) and Nepal. Since then he has undertaken numerous assignments from obtaining regulatory permissions from FINTRAC, the FCA, the DFSA in the UAE to obtaining permissions from Central Banks: The Central Bank of Nigeria, The Central Bank of Kenya, The Central Bank of Pakistan, The and The Central Bank of Bangladesh to launching the first account-to-account workers remittance service into East Africa with the Equity Bank Group called Equity Direct which was recognised by the World Bank.

Steven returned to Nigeria to launch a mass payment solution for (a client in Canada that was acquired by PayPal) a UK non-bank financial institution in partnership with The Standard Bank of South Africa enabling real-time payments to 30 million bank accounts within NIBBS the RTGS payments system.

Steven Faulkner
Managing Director

Agnos Consulting Limited

Highlights & Experience

HSBC Securities Services - Regional Network Manager EMEA

Established sub-custody services in Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Romania, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, the Russian Federation and Ukraine.

Bank advisory in Jordan, Cyprus and Lebanon.

Part of a task force to consolidate five legacy securities systems to one SMAC system. The platform continues in operation today.

Founder member of the Network Managers Forum.

JPMorgan Chase Bank N.A - Vice President & Network Manager EMEA

Global Custody, Sub-Custody, Corporate Trust and Agency Services, Global Treasury Operations, Multi-Currency Payments and Cash Management. Internal relationship manager to the firms business lines and externally to represent the bank and providing advocacy to influence external parties such as regulators, other government bodies and industry groups.

Member of Treasury Services Strategy and Planning Committee focussing on critical aspects of global cash and liquidity management, self-clearing, cross-currency payments, multi-currency account services, in-country treasury services outsourcing/insourcing and Continuous Linked Settlement.

I coordinated the takedown of legacy Bank One’s cash and securities networks and consolidation into JPMorgan Chase's, spearheading the Cash Disruption Team responsible for anticipating and rerouting USD 500 million worth of misdirected funds (out of USD 10 trillion) over two weeks immediately following the decommissioning of Bank One’s nostro network.

Established a low-cost mechanism to generate EUR liquidity in Frankfurt just before Bank One's takedown. A Swiss bank acted as liquidity provider by taking the eligible collateral Bank One had previously held at the ECB and depositing it with the Swiss Bank's Frankfurt branch.

UBA Bank Plc, Lagos, Nigeria - Chief Operating Officer

I was responsible for implementing domestic pension securities custody and fund administration services. UBA was the first bank in Nigeria to be granted a licence by the National Pensions Commission, and live operations commenced on 16/02/2006, with UBA winning several high-profile pension fund custody mandates.

Highlights & Experience (continued)

Mobile Union Limited, UK

Co-founder and technical designer of a real-time online remittance service serving Bangladesh, Nigeria and Nepal, terminating transactions to local bank accounts and the emerging mobile money schemes (in the days before smartphones) and enabling pay-out in cash. One of the first remittance services to offer real-time transaction status updates and delivery notifications, advising the time and location of credit or cash pick-up. We secured the requisite licences to operate in Nigeria, Bangladesh (where I negotiated a partnership with BRAC, the world’s largest NGO) and Nepal.

VFX Financial PLC, UK, UAE, Canada

Secured the PayPal account, processing tens of thousands of payments to bank accounts in Nigeria
Identified and closed the sale of an FCA-regulated payments business owned by VFX to an Indian industrial conglomerate now known as Terrapay.
Implemented the world’s first instant cross-border account-to-account remittance service to Kenya, 'Equity Direct' which was recognised by the World Bank.
Successfully obtained licenses to acquire/terminate transactions in Nigeria, The Gambia, Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Rwanda, Pakistan, Cambodia, Canada and Australia.
Opened wholesale accounts at several Tier-1 FX and derivative liquidity providers.
Structured the world’s first just-in-time liquidity for East Africa, including Tanzania, South Sudan, Uganda, and Burundi.
A regular attendee at SIBOS and SWELL, speaker at conferences, roundtables and interest groups such as The Commonwealth Institute on payments and remittances to Africa.
Liaise with compliance departments internally and externally to explain Risk Assessment and how it might be used to provide regulators (and other parties such as banks contemplating de-risking) the comfort that they require and assurance around AML/KYC and Sanctions and other risk factors affecting regulatory and bank policy compliance
Implemented a real-time solution to automatically switch from NIPS to NAPS payment systems within NIBBS in Nigeria when the scheme’s NGN 100 million intra-day ceiling was reached. NIPS provides guaranteed finality in seconds once the scheme has accepted the payment.
Obtained licenses at the DFSA (CAT 3D) in the UAE, FINTRAC Canada & an EMI license from the FCA.