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Kleopatra Nikolaou
Senior Financial Sector Expert
International Monetary Fund (IMF)
Kleopatra Nikolaou is a Senior Financial Sector Expert at the International Monetary Fund (IMF), where she works on systemic risk and financial resilience. Her recent work examines vulnerabilities in global financial markets, with a particular focus on technological innovation and tokenization, market-based finance, and funding markets. She contributes regularly to the IMF’s Global Financial Stability Report and has published extensively in academic journals and policy publications on liquidity and funding markets, market structure, monetary policy, and financial stability. She is currently Deputy Mission Chief for the Andorra FSAP, participated in the Canada FSAP, and has worked on financial-sector programs and missions for Ireland, Greece, and Portugal following the global financial crisis. Before joining the IMF, she held various roles at the Federal Reserve Board and the European Central Bank. She holds a PhD in Economics from Warwick Business School.
Speaking at SFF 2026
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3:15–4:00pmFri 20 NovFrontier StageHall 6, Singapore EXPOPremium
Technology Rewiring
Scaling Tokenization: New Efficiencies, New Vulnerabilities
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Kleopatra NikolaouSenior Financial Sector ExpertInternational Monetary Fund (IMF)
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Manisha PatelFinancial Sector Expert (Payments, Currencies & Infrastructures)International Monetary Fund (IMF)
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Mindaugas LeikaSenior Financial Sector ExpertInternational Monetary Fund (IMF)
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Khyati ChauhanChief of Staff to Group Chief Executive OfficerGlobal Finance & Technology Network (GFTN)Moderator
About this session
Tokenization has moved beyond pilots into repo, money market funds and bond issuance, yet activity remains small and spread across siloed, permissioned platforms. Atomic settlement, programmable collateral and round-the-clock trading are stripping cost and reconciliation from the asset life cycle. The same features also remove the timing gaps and intermediaries that traditionally absorb liquidity and operational shocks. When settlement leaves no time to react, where does resilience come from? This session examines which gains depend on a shared ledger, what legal certainty and safe settlement must deliver before markets scale, and how safeguards work when markets never close.
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