Deborah Williams is the Director for the RBS Citizens Bank NA Basel II Program. She has responsibility for all aspects of Basel II compliance for the banking subsidiaries. Prior to assuming this role, she was responsible for the technology efforts associated with the Basel II initiatives, including technology design and architecture, data infrastructure and information quality in support of both US initiatives and Citizens’ parent company RBS’ FSA reporting requirements. In addition, her team was responsible for rolling out an enterprise wide platform to support centralized account and customer information for both retail and wholesale businesses across the group.

Industry Expertise
Prior to joining Citizens Bank in 2006, Debbie advised financial institutions in North America, Europe, Asia and the Middle East on risk systems implementations. Debbie led the Capital Markets and Risk Management research teams at Financial Insights. She was a co-founder and COO of Meridien Research (sold in 2002 to IDC to form Financial Insights) and was responsible for growing the firm’s client base and research library. Williams was a leading researcher and analyst in the risk management industry. Her writings addressed credit risk, asset liability management and operational risk management systems, as well as profitability systems, payment systems, and a variety of trading room applications. Before founding Meridien Research, Williams co-founded TowerGroup and was responsible for their research in Wholesale Banking and Capital Markets. Prior to her 15 years as a leading researcher in the industry, Debbie was Head of Planning for Citibank’s Technology and Operations Group in Tokyo, where she spent time redesigning the IT infrastructure for Citibank’s Tokyo wholesale banking division.  As a result of her time in Japan, Williams is fluent in Japanese.

Education and Industry Affiliations
Williams has authored articles for numerous industry publications including: Risk Magazine, Waters, Wall Street and Technology , Financial Accounting, Securities Industry News and Financial Times and New York Times.  Additionally, she has contributed to five books on risk management and regularly presents at industry conferences on risk management topics.  Ms. Williams is a regional director for the Boston region of  PRMIA (Professional Risk Management International Association) and co-Head of the Technology Committee of the IAFE (International Association of Financial Engineers) and a member of their Advisory Board.