Bio
Akber advises financial institutions at the intersection of Fintech and Legaltech to achieve business optimisation, regulatory compliance and operational efficiencies. Prior to D2LT, he started his career at UBS, working as part of the front office IT team within fixed income derivatives and leading its participation in industry initiatives such as FpML. He then requalified as a lawyer with Allen & Overy LLP, qualifying as an associate in the Derivatives and Structured Finance Group. After serving as the head of the legal practice at Sapient, Akber founded D2LT in 2011, where he has overseen its growth during the last ten years across the UK, US and Asia. He acts as a trusted advisor to a number of investment banks, asset managers and trade associations. This has been in the capital markets space, including advising both ISDA, ICMA and ISLA on legal agreement digitisation, leading their clause taxonomy and library projects. His expertise extends to wider industries, with key engagements such as with the Philippines SEC to develop digital assets service provider rules and capacity training, GAFTA to create a digitalisation strategy and roadmap for the grain and trade feed industry, and a leading Canadian insurance broker to use AI to review insurance certificates for coverage compliance.
His practice covers capital markets trading and regulation, digital assets and AI/digital transformation.
Akber co-chairs the Technology and Law Committee of the Law Society England & Wales, having previously led its digital assets and smart contracts sub-committee and is a PRIME Finance Expert. He is the author of the Wiley textbook, Legal Data – Banking & Finance, published in May 2019 and has written chapters on Smart Contracts and Contract Optimisation in the best-selling Wiley InsurTech and FinTech books, as well as being the co-editor of the LegalTech book in this series (published in June 2020).
In 2019, Akber was recognised as “one of the top ten market shapers” in the Financial Times Intelligent Business Awards and for the development of an industry netting counterparty type utility at their 2020 awards.
He is a professor at the University of Surrey teaching Cyberlaw, Law & Technology, AI & Ethics and Financial Services & FinTech Policy to final year undergraduates of the School of Law and Fintech Masters students.
Akber graduated with first class honours in Computer Science at Cambridge University. Based in London England, he enjoys playing football and is an avid Tottenham fan.
