Christopher Schmitz is a Partner in EY EMEIA Financial Services, leading the Transaction, Strategy & Execution team in Germany. He is also the EY Fintech Lead Germany and the EY EMEIA SaT Innovation Leader. He joined Ernst & Young in 2011 and is based in Frankfurt. Christopher Schmitz has more than 20 years of experience in strategy consulting and transaction advisory in Financial Services, including Booz & Company, Deutsche Bank and IBM. Christopher leads the EY German Fintech and Insurtech practice, working with start-ups, corporates and investors in digital platform and ecosystem building Christopher is the EY member in the Tech Quartier Steering Committee (Frankfurt based Fintech ecosystem), EY’s representative in the Cologne based Insurlab Insurtech ecosystem and leads the EY Startup Academy. He has deep expertise in strategy and organisation for service operations (payments, FX, securities processing, credit processing, cards issuing/acquiring/ POS network operations, PSPs) as well as in IT application development and IT operations, core banking and migrations. Christopher Schmitz frequently publishes and holds conference speeches on digital ecosystems in Financial Services.