Simon Deane-Johns

Simon Deane-Johns is a consultant solicitor specialising in FinTech regulatory and commercial work, including payment services, P2P lending, crowdfunding and data services. He has advised on the launch of many innovative start-ups, including Zopa, Prodigy Finance, Abundance Generation, Crowdbnk and Proplend; and is involved in assessing various potential applications of distributed ledger technology. He has previously consulted in-house at Amazon, WorldPay and Reuters; and led legal teams at GE, Zopa and Earthport. Simon has long been involved in public affairs relating to payments and crowdfunding. He advised on the creation of the P2P Finance Association in 2011; and in 2012 co-organised the P2P Finance Policy Summit for UK & EU officials and industry representatives with The Finance Innovation Lab (of which he was appointed a Senior Fellow in 2015). Simon also chairs the SCL's Media Board and speaks and writes regularly on finance and innovation. He is the author of the blogs "Pragmatist" and "The Fine Print"; the book "Lipstick On a Pig: Why Bail-outs Fail and People Power Will Succeed" (Searching Finance, 2012); and the Developers' Guide to Legal Requirements, Lexis PSL 2015. Simon began his career as a barrister in Sydney before working for Reuters in London and New York; and then as an Associate in DLA's London office, specialising in e-commerce.