Elizabeth Severinovskaya is a managing director in the Financial Crimes Compliance practice at K2 Integrity, where she advises both crypto natives and traditional finance (TradFi) clients on their financial crimes risk and compliance strategies. She has a broad range of industry experience across banking and financial services, Fintechs, payments, and cryptocurrency platforms. In her past roles Elizabeth has advised regulatory bodies, international organizations, global systemically important banks (GSIBs), and industry-leading cryptocurrency firms.
Prior to joining K2 Integrity, Elizabeth worked as a senior consultant in the digital assets practice at Promontory Financial Group, a business unit of IBM Consulting, where she performed a number of industry standard-setting engagements, including leading the development of the Nebraska Digital Asset Depository Institution (DDI) BSA/AML and OFAC Examination Manual and the Nebraska DDI Supervisory Handbook to support implementation of the Nebraska Financial Innovation Act, as well as training a federal supervisory agency on BSA/AML and sanctions risks unique to cryptocurrency. In her time at Promontory, Elizabeth advised several leading virtual asset service providers, including exchanges, prime brokerages, and digital asset custodians, on their licensing, chartering, and remediation strategies, and has developed an expertise in building and implementing BSA/AML compliance programs tailored to the virtual asset industry from the ground up.
Elizabeth previously worked at two leading Fintechs, Coinbase and Stripe, where she held several risk and compliance roles involving policy development, program development and implementation, and process optimization. At Coinbase, Elizabeth also headed up the compliance partnerships function for Coinbase’s fiat partners and developed Coinbase’s BSA/AML program governance. At Stripe, Elizabeth developed the Fintech user supportability strategy through a cross-functional partnership with legal, product, engineering, and credit for Stripe’s fastest-growing user segment.
Prior to her foray into the Fintech space, Elizabeth served as the BSA/AML head of governance and strategy at Scotiabank, where she led Scotiabank’s BSA/AML remediation strategy for its public Written Agreement with the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and the New York State Department of Financial Services, ultimately resulting in enforcement action closure.
Elizabeth earned a M.G.A. in global affairs and a J.D. from the University of Toronto, during which time she advised the Egmont Group of Financial Intelligence Units and interned with several leading UN-affiliated international organizations, including the Coalition for the International Criminal Court.
