Maya Chief Risk and Compliance Officer Julie Reyes has been named Governance, Risk and Compliance (GRC) Advocate of the Year at the World Financial Innovation Series (WFIS) Philippines Awards 2026.
The recognition marks Reyes’ second win in the category, following her first GRC Advocate of the Year award in 2024. She received the latest award as financial institutions face increasingly complex risks from digital fraud, identity theft, and real-time financial transactions.
Maya highlights unified risk management
Reyes was recognized for championing Maya’s One Maya Governance Framework, which aligns risk standards, controls, escalation paths, and oversight across the company’s banking and payments businesses.
Maya Bank and Maya Philippines remain separately governed entities, with their own licenses, board accountabilities, and regulatory and compliance responsibilities.
Under the framework, risk and compliance teams work alongside business, technology, and operations teams during decision-making rather than becoming involved only after products and services are developed.
This approach also brings risk expertise into areas such as credit assessment, fraud management, and customer protection while maintaining the separate responsibilities of each regulated entity.
“Digital finance should be fast, but speed has to be matched by sound judgment, clear guardrails and accountability,” Reyes said. “Risk and compliance should help the business make better decisions as products and services are developed—not appear only at the end.”
Maya expands real-time fraud controls
Maya said its fraud and financial crime controls use real-time and AI-assisted capabilities to identify suspicious patterns and support investigations.
The controls cover multiple stages of the customer relationship, including onboarding, authentication, account recovery, profile changes, and transaction monitoring. Maya said this layered approach is designed to identify risks beyond individual transactions by also accounting for changes in customer behavior and account activity.
At a WFIS panel, Reyes also identified deepfakes and increasingly sophisticated impersonation and identity fraud as emerging concerns for financial institutions.
She said banks and other financial institutions need risk-based controls throughout the customer relationship, alongside closer coordination between financial institutions, telecommunications companies, technology platforms, and authorities.
Risk management takes bigger role in digital finance
The discussion comes as Philippine financial institutions implement the Anti-Financial Account Scamming Act and related Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas requirements, including Circular No. 1213, which strengthened requirements around fraud monitoring, authentication, and account protection.
For Maya, Reyes said risk management needs to remain integrated with how digital financial products are developed and operated.
“Strong risk management is a shared responsibility,” Reyes said. “This recognition reflects the work of teams across Maya who make careful decisions every day and continue strengthening how we protect customers and support responsible growth.”
The GRC Advocate of the Year award recognizes professionals for contributions to governance, risk, and compliance and their role in supporting secure and responsible growth.
WFIS Philippines is organized by Tradepass and brings together financial institutions, regulators, technology providers, and other financial-sector stakeholders to discuss developments in banking and financial services.
