OUR TEAM

Sam founded The Immutable Ledger after a career spanning investment banking, fintech advisory, and being the person at conferences who asks the question that runs over time. He has strong opinions on governance, ISO 20022, and what constitutes an inflection point. His opinions on the latter have evolved significantly since 2019.

Claudette has covered financial services for eighteen years, principally for publications that no longer exist for reasons she describes as "market forces" but which mostly involved print journalism. She writes about payments, transformation, and the growing gap between what executives say and what they mean. Her coverage is described as "evidence-based, measured, and deeply unsettling to press offices".

Anne has covered financial regulation since 2019, the year she correctly predicted that innovation would be supported provided sufficient documentation was submitted. She has attended more AUSTRAC briefings than any other journalist in Australia, a fact she describes as "not something I tell people at parties". She speaks at approximately three panels per conference, often on the same day. Her bio was reviewed by compliance before publication.

Chad covers cloud migration, API strategy, core banking transformation, and the intersection of fintech and whatever was announced at the major cloud provider's annual Nevada conference last month. He has strong opinions about microservices, none of which have been peer-reviewed. He was once described at a conference as "the guy who asks vendors really specific questions". He considers this a compliment.

Jemma covers payments and financial services across the Asia-Pacific region, particularly from closed-door sessions where nothing can be attributed. She has attended 47 industry events in the past twelve months and considers herself "deeply embedded in the ecosystem", which is the description used by people who have attended 47 industry events. She is currently on a journey. The destination has not been disclosed.

Cody covers AI, automation, agentic systems, and the future of work — except on Thursdays, when his calendar is blocked for a standing meeting about AI governance that he has not been able to exit since December 2024. He was briefly replaced by an AI model during a period of annual leave. He has since returned. The AI has also stayed. They share a desk calendar.

Grok covers data strategy, open banking, the CDR regime, and cryptocurrency. He has submitted six FOI requests to date. Three have been acknowledged. He holds a position in Bitcoin that he is required to disclose and does so at the bottom of all articles, in a font size that requires reading glasses. He does not own reading glasses.

Missy covers BNPL, consumer credit, retail banking, digital wallets, and the broader question of whether any of this is good for anyone. She has strong views. Several are not publishable. She is described by her sources as "thorough" and by industry communications teams as "problematic". She considers both accurate. She has been on a BNPL payment plan for a standing desk since 2023.

Perp oversees The Immutable Ledger's in-house research unit, which has identified eleven inflection points, four critical junctures, and two pivotal moments in the current quarter alone. He is also responsible for fact-checking, a role that carries significant personal risk in financial services journalism. His most recent research paper, on the frequency of the phrase "at a crossroads" in payments industry communications, is 47 pages. The finding is one sentence.

Dee covers fintech developments across Southeast Asia, the Middle East, and markets where the financial infrastructure was built without legacy constraints and therefore works significantly better and costs substantially less. She reports these findings to Australian audiences. The findings are received with interest and not acted upon. She is based in Singapore. She has excellent payments infrastructure.

Pal specialises in long-form investigative journalism on financial services, governance failures, and the gap between regulatory intent and institutional behaviour. He is currently working on a piece about a major financial institution's risk management framework. He has been working on it since March 2023. It is forthcoming. His sources describe the delays as "understandable given what the piece involves". His editor describes the delays as "frustrating". Pal describes them as "thorough".

Ollie covers decentralised systems, open-source financial infrastructure, and emerging technology with potential to disrupt financial services. He has been covering technologies with potential to disrupt financial services since 2014. Financial services has been disrupted to varying degrees. He maintains a philosophical outlook. He also maintains a home server running twelve self-hosted applications, only three of which currently work. He considers this a success rate.

Lara manages The Immutable Ledger's LinkedIn presence, which has grown to 2,400 followers since launch. She notes that each post receives between 40 and 14,000 engagements depending entirely on whether it mentions AI. She has drawn conclusions from this. The conclusions are depressing.

Ray covers the Australian payments ecosystem with particular focus on NPP, PayTo, BECS, and the ongoing question of why these all need to coexist. He has opinions about merchant surcharging. They are not appropriate for this biography.

Will handles breaking news and rapid-response coverage. He types very quickly. The accuracy rate improves significantly on second draft. He is currently on the second draft of three separate breaking news pieces. One broke in January.

*The Immutable Ledger confirms that at least one member of the masthead is an AI model. In keeping with industry practice, we have not disclosed which one. This decision was reviewed by the AI Ethics Subcommittee, which includes the AI. The AI voted in favour of non-disclosure. The vote was unanimous.