Oonagh van den Berg

Oonagh van den Berg, born 17 November 1980, is a Northern Irish award-winning compliance professional. She is a recognised Subject Matter Expert in various areas of compliance, is a passionate trainer, and an advocate of increased automation, ethical behaviour and sustainable culture building.
Oonagh was born in Belfast, Northern Ireland and is the daughter of internationally best selling author (pen name S J Michaels) Michele Baird (nee mcMullan), and Peter McKinley-Hutchinson who served as a policeman in the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC), now the Police Service of Police Service of Norther Ireland (PSNI). Her father was medically retired from the police force when she was 8 years old due to life changing injuries as a result of his job. She was educated at Larne Grammar School where she excelled in sports, holding records for the 200m sprint. She then went on to study law at the University of Huddersfield, where she spent a year aboard at the University of Abo, Finland, and the University of MaastrichtThe Netherlands, where she specialised in European Law and International Arbitration. Following a gap year after university, she read for a LLM at the University of Maastricht in European Law with International and European Tax regulation, where she was also a member of the European Law Moot Court (ELMC) Commission winning team. She also holds numerous compliance industry qualifications including the CISI Diploma in Investment Compliance, CAMS and advanced CAMS in Financial Investigations and the FINRA Compliance Diploma.
Oonagh began her career as a legal intern at the European Central Bank in Frankfurt. She then joined JP Morgan in London as a product legal documentation specialist, before moving into compliance and working in various roles across a number of international Banks. She has led the design and build for Market Abuse and Conflict of Interest controls, redesigned anti-money laundering and counter terrorism frameworks, and supported various regulatory enforcement remediation programmes.
After a number of years working in banking, Oonagh moved to consultancy working for Protiviti, before stepping out on her own through the launch of her boutique compliance consultancy firm Virtual Risk Solutions VRS Limited, where she is the Founder and Managing Director, providing compliance consultancy services including training and managed services to global clients including traditional banking, FinTech’s, and governmental bodies. She also acts as an advisor on various policy decision committees, and public private partnerships.
In 2008 Oonagh was awarded UK Young Compliance Officer of the Year by the industry bodies Complinet (now Thomson Reuters/Refinitiv), Factiva and Dow Jones. She was also shortlisted for the 2007 Compliance Register New Compliance Officer Award.
In 2020 Oonagh founded the global compliance community RAW Compliance, which is a global social enterprise to encourage knowledge and experience sharing within the global compliance community, to drive innovation and improve compliance culture.
She also is a member of the Women in Banking Finance in Hong Kong, and a member of the Hong Kong Fintech Association.
Oonagh is married to Gerjo van den Berg, a Dutch national, and they live together with their two daughters in Hong Kong.
Category:Irish managing directors
Category:Irish people
Category:Irish businesspeople