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Ballerine expands EMEA leadership by appointing Christian Chmiel

Friday, June 27, 2025 — 18:10:25 (UTC)

San Francisco, CA, 26 June, 2025 — Ballerine, an AI risk intelligence platform designed to help financial institutions, fintechs, and marketplaces automate and optimize merchant onboarding, verification, and lifecycle monitoring processes, today announced the appointment of Christian A. Chmiel as its new General Manager for the EMEA region. Christian brings more than two decades of experience in risk management, compliance, and merchant oversight, and will play a key role in expanding Ballerine’s presence across Europe, the Middle East, and Africa.

Throughout his career, Christian has made significant contributions to the sectors of fraud prevention and payments, including serving as Founder & CEO of the Web Shield Group and Deputy Head of Compliance at an acquiring bank. His leadership has helped shape industry standards in online fraud detection and high-risk underwriting.

Christian is both a Certified Fraud Examiner and a Certified High-Risk Underwriter. He has also been a thought leader in the space, publishing insights in key industry journals, hosting conferences, and lecturing at the Web Shield Academy. His achievements have been recognized by leading organizations including the Electronic Transactions Association (ETA) and PayTech Awards.

In his new role at Ballerine, Christian will guide the company’s efforts to support financial institutions across EMEA with AI-powered tools that drive smarter, more transparent merchant risk decisions.

“I’m thrilled to join Ballerine at such a pivotal time for risk and compliance in the financial services industry,” said Christian Chmiel, General Manager EMEA at Ballerine. “Ballerine is the first AI agent that thinks like an expert underwriter, combining regulatory knowledge and fraud intelligence to automate deep risk analysis. It unifies KYB, web, and transaction data into one intelligent profile, detecting inconsistencies, risks, and compliance gaps in real-time. For acquirers and payment providers, this means faster onboarding, smarter decisions, and the ability to confidently scale into new verticals and markets - without adding manual overhead.”

“Christian brings a strong track record in risk and compliance, combined with a clear understanding of the challenges financial institutions face today,” said Noam Izhaki, co-founder and CEO of Ballerine. “As we expand across EMEA, his experience building and scaling risk operations will be invaluable. We’re proud to have him on board as we continue helping institutions make smarter, faster decisions with AI.”

About Ballerine Ballerine is an AI-native risk and compliance platform that empowers financial institutions, payment providers, and fintechs to make smarter, faster risk decisions. Instead of static checks and fragmented tools, we unify business data, fraud signals, and compliance workflows into one modular infrastructure. It’s fully customizable, lets teams automate what they need, integrates with what they already use, and adapts quickly as risk evolves. The result: faster onboarding, reduced fraud, stronger compliance, and a risk engine that actually keeps pace.

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Source: Company press release.

Categories: Appointment