Matthew joined the FCA as the new Director of Payments & Digital Assets in October 2022. In his role, Matthew is responsible for Market Interventions, Market Analysis and Policy across the

Payments and Digital Asset Portfolios. In addition, Matthew continues the FCA’s leadership in international crypto initiatives as the Lead of the IOSCO Fintech Taskforce Crypto and Digital Assets Working Group.
 
Matthew is the former Director of the National Economic Crime Command within the National Crime Agency (NCA). His responsibilities included leading the multi-agency National Economic Crime Centre which has a strategic UK system leadership role for economic crime and illicit finance. He also led the UK Financial Intelligence Unit (UKFIU) which has national responsibility for receiving, analysing and disseminating financial intelligence submitted through the Suspicious Activity Reports Regime. At the NCA, he has driven the public-private partnership with financial services to find solutions for government and industry problems together, most recently with a Crypto Summit. Matthew works to balance risks and opportunity of innovation and has carried this into his role at the FCA.
 
Operationally, he is a multi-agency Commander with extensive experience in leading international initiatives and collaboration, including through his work with Interpol, Europol and international roundtables on serious and organised crime. Prior to this, Matthew was leading the response to Organised Immigration Crime, Modern Slavery and Human Trafficking, Drugs, Firearms, Borders and the programme to build the National Data Exploitation Capability. Matthew’s career began as a detective in Kent Police where he qualified as Senior Investigating Officer (SIO) having led over 400 investigations, including a number of high profile child abuse operations.
 
He is proud of his international collaboration in both illicit finance and child exploitation delivering both operational and policy results. He received national and international awards for his investigations and innovation.
 
Matthew holds a PhD in Risk Management and has been part of a team creating worldwide child abuse risk assessments. In his academic life he is currently working on applying child abuse risk models to terrorism.