Some decisions are too important to be made in the ordinary flow of management meetings. TABInsights works with financial institutions that want to step back, challenge their assumptions, and think through their strategic direction, bringing independent research, an experienced external perspective, and the hard-won judgement of senior practitioners who have sat in the same room and faced the same decisions themselves.
A different kind of strategic session
The most consequential strategic decisions in a financial institution rarely emerge from standard management processes. They require dedicated time, a structured framework for challenging prevailing assumptions, and access to evidence and perspective that goes beyond what internal teams can produce about their own organisation.
A growing number of our clients involve TABInsights directly in that process. They commission us to design and facilitate bespoke strategy and brainstorming sessions, built around primary research and analytical intelligence developed specifically for their institution, their competitive context, and the strategic question at hand.
What makes these sessions different is what we bring into the room. Not only the research, the benchmarking findings, competitive landscape analysis, peer performance comparisons, and forward-looking views on the market forces that will shape the client's strategic choices but the people who help interpret it. TABInsights' management retreat engagements draw on a panel of international advisors who have held senior executive roles inside major financial institutions across Asia Pacific, the Middle East, Europe, and the Americas. These are former chief executives, chief risk officers, chief technology officers, and business line heads who have navigated precisely the kind of strategic decisions our clients are facing. They do not bring academic frameworks. They bring the experience of having made consequential choices under the same conditions of uncertainty, competitive pressure, and regulatory constraint that our clients are operating under today.
The combination, rigorous primary research interpreted by people who have lived the operational reality it describes, produces a quality of strategic conversation that neither a consulting firm nor an internal strategy team can replicate independently.
Talk to us
Contact us at gzhi@tab.global to discuss how we can support your next strategic session.
Who this is for
Management retreat engagements are commissioned by banks and financial institutions at a strategic inflection point, preparing a new three-to-five-year strategy, reassessing a business model under competitive or regulatory pressure, evaluating a significant technology or market investment, or preparing a board-level strategy presentation that requires an independent evidence base and external challenge.
They are also used by institutions that have an ongoing relationship with TABInsights through our benchmarking or consulting programmes and want to bring our accumulated knowledge of their competitive position — and the direct experience of our advisory panel — into a leadership decision-making session.
Our international advisors and resource directors
TABInsights' management retreat engagements draw on a curated panel of senior advisors, including former banking executives with careers spanning global systemically important banks, regional champions, and specialist financial institutions across Asia Pacific, the Middle East, Africa, and Europe.
Their backgrounds cover retail banking, corporate and institutional banking, transaction banking, risk management, technology transformation, and regulatory leadership. They are selected for each engagement based on the relevance of their experience to the client's specific strategic question and ensuring that the perspective brought into the room is not generic financial services wisdom, but the direct experience of people who have navigated the precise decisions the client is facing.
Talk to us
If you are preparing for a significant strategic decision and want an external partner who will bring independent research, a clear point of view, and structured facilitation to the table, contact us at gzhi@tab.global.
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Mai Kaneko leads international business and marketing at DeCurret DCP, a Japanese fintech firm operating a multi-bank network for tokenized deposit under the DCJPY framework. She oversees international expansion initiatives, bank-fintech partnerships and global go-to-market strategy. She holds a Master’s in International Relations from Georgetown University and a Bachelor’s in Economics from University of Tokyo.
Kinoshita has been involved in product development projects across a wide range of industries in Japan, including e-commerce, retail, banking, insurance, and manufacturing. He joined DeCurret DCP in 2024, where he has been engaged in the development of digital currency infrastructure. In addition to building the underlying infrastructure, he supports digital transformation (DX) initiatives associated with the adoption of digital currency solutions across various industries, and promotes projects aimed at enabling cross-border transactions.
Jason Hunt works within ANZ's Industry & Innovation function, engaging with industry challenges, trends and disruptive technologies across payments, digital assets, platforms and data-driven solutions. ANZ was a participant in Project Acacia, the joint Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) and Digital Finance Cooperative Research Centre (DFCRC) initiative exploring digital money in wholesale tokenised asset markets, which concluded with its final report in May 2026. ANZ has also previously issued its own Australian dollar-denominated stablecoin, A$DC, to settle a real-money digital asset transaction.
Zhu Kuang Lee leads UOB's Innovation Group, formed in April 2025 to consolidate the bank's work across digital assets, data management, blockchain and enterprise artificial intelligence. He represents UOB in regional digital money and tokenisation initiatives, including collaboration with the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS), and has described the bank's approach as embedding compliance into system design from the outset rather than adding it later.
Abhinav is currently based in Singapore and leads Client solutions and Sales for Partior. In this capacity, he oversees clients' journeys including commercial and central banks, from defining use cases to product integration. Before taking on this role, Abhinav gained extensive experience working with both global and local banks. He spearheaded transformative initiatives in Payments and Core Banking, requiring him to coordinate efforts across business units, technology teams, and regulatory bodies. Abhinav played a pivotal role in implementing Faster Payments projects throughout Asia, including notable projects like Singapore G3 Fast, Malaysia Duit Now, and Hong Kong FPS. Prior to his tenure in the banking sector, Abhinav served as a Payments Financial Services consultant to various banks and payment fintech companies such as ANZ, Deutsche Bank, and Bank of America. Originally from India, Abhinav holds an Engineering degree and a Postgraduate qualification in Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence. He is also a dedicated father of two, and he enjoys spending his weekends playing tennis and cherishing moments with his family.
Sakae Hamasaki joined Sanwa Bank (currently MUFG Bank) in April 1993 and worked in corporate banking across five domestic locations. From 2006 onward, he gained extensive experience in the planning, development, and sales of payment-related services for corporate clients in Japan and overseas. He joined DeCurret DCP in 2022, where he has been leading initiatives to support banks in evaluating the adoption of tokenized deposits, as well as collaborating with overseas partners to build cross-border networks utilizing tokenized deposits.
Anouska Ladds is Executive Vice President of Commercial & New Payment Flows, Asia Pacific at Mastercard, based in Singapore. With over 17 years at Mastercard, she has held senior roles across sales, strategy, operations, market development, consultancy, and product development, spanning Asia Pacific, Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. Previously at Barclaycard, she specialised in strategy, customer experience, communications, and SME/acquiring businesses.
David is a seasoned technology executive with significant experience and has over 25 years' experience in CISO and CIO roles across different industries and countries. David has served as a CIO spans across multiple industries and geographies. He was winner Australia CIO of the Year for driving CUA's Transformation. Also, David was CISO for HSBC and Global Head Technology, Cyber and Data Risk Macquarie Group.
A regular conference keynote speaker and thought leader he writes for CIO, CSO, Computerworld and Australian Institute of Company Directors (AICD). His best-selling book - the Aspiring CIO & CISO was published in June 2024 and his second book A Day in the Life of a CISO launched in October 2025 and is already best seller in UK, Singapore, Japan and Australia.
Johnson is a seasoned executive and data and AI leader with over 15 years of experience across the public and private sectors. He is currently Assistant Chief Executive at IMDA, where he helps shape Singapore’s digital future and advance the digital economy. He has held senior data and AI roles in regional banking and global consulting, and began his career in defence and critical infrastructure.
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