Tom Layman is the President and Founder of Global Vision Group. In addition to managing the company, he serves as the leader of its strategy practice group. His specialties include business strategy, financial modeling, research and risk mitigation. 

Tom has over 30 years of international and domestic experience in the financial services and electronic payments industry. Prior to creating Global Vision Group, Tom was Senior Vice President with Visa U.S.A., holding a number of executive positions during his 11-year career there. He managed the Visa Profitability Consulting practice, as well as all of the business research functions, which included performing cost reduction and benchmarking studies, and served as Chief Economist. 

As global relationship manager at Visa, Tom helped US-based issuers launch programs overseas. He also headed up all of Visa's efforts to mitigate the impact of personal bankruptcies on creditors, and cochaired a creditor coalition that helped write, introduce, and lobby bankruptcy legislation. 

Prior to Visa, most of his experience was directed toward assessing the business environment risk of emerging markets. Tom holds a BA from Vanderbilt University and a PhD in international trade and finance from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Tom has over 20 published articles on credit card and economic policy issues and is coauthor of a book on the role of foreign direct investment in Indonesia. Tom also Chairs the Board of Directors of the San Francisco Consumer Credit Counseling Service (dba Balance).

Kevin is senior consultant with GVGroup and brings over 23 years of experience domestically and internationally in the financial services and electronic payments industry. 

Kevin’s career includes attaining the position of Senior Vice President at Visa, responsible for sales and partnerships with multiple top 10 issuing and acquiring banks that generated more than $40 billion in annual card sales volume. During his tenure there, Kevin was instrumental in delivering numerous new products and services to Visa’s banking clients. For example, Kevin supported supported the creation, development and initial launch of several fraud reduction programs, including the Issuers’ Clearing House Service and AntiCounterfeit Terminal Program, which have continued to save issuers millions of dollars. 

In 2002, Kevin joined Wells Fargo Bank as Vice President and National Relationship Manager for the Merchant Processing Business. Kevin also served as a mortgage lending officer at Washington Mutual Bank, where he brought card marketing innovation concepts to the Home Loan Mortgage Banking Division. 

Given this deep domain experience in the financial services industry, Kevin’s expertise covers a broad range of areas, including marketing, debit, credit and ACH products, customer life cycle management, relationship management, product innovation, merchant processing in both the physical and online environment, co-branding, commercial card products, operations, risk management and collections. Kevin holds a B.A. degree from San Jose State University.

Vinod is a GVGroup principal and leads the risk, operations & efficiency practice, where he specializes in best practices for debit, credit and ACH products, credit risk policy evaluation, risk and marketing score cards. 

He has over 25 years of success in financial services and payment system organizations, developing and managing initiatives that enhance a company’s position, brand-differentiation and competitive strengths in the marketplace. 

Vinod was Vice President with Visa USA for nearly a decade, where he was in charge of Issuer Risk Management and spearheaded various benchmarking and cost reduction initiatives in risk management to improve bankcard industry profitability. 

Prior to joining Visa in 1992, Vinod was with Bank of America, where he was on the project team that successfully implemented the Flex Project bank-wide in 12 months. 

He was also responsible for management of business unit financial reporting functions, spearheading one the major process-change projects undertaken by the bank. 

His background also includes three years project management experience developing national grid infrastructure in Africa. 

Vinod earned a Bachelor’s Degree in Engineering from Kashmir University and a Master’s Degree in Business Administration from San Francisco State University.