Swee Suan, Dora NEO

Dora Neo Swee Suan is an Associate Professor and founding Director of the Centre for Banking & Finance Law (CBFL) at the National University of Singapore (NUS) Faculty of Law. She also leads the LLM (Corporate and Financial Services Law) and Graduate Certificate programmes. Previously, she served as Vice-Dean (Research & Graduate Studies) and Director of the Continuing Legal Education Programme. Her expertise spans contract law, credit & security law, and modernization of trade finance systems.

Education: MA (Oxford University), LLM (Harvard Law School), Barrister (Gray’s Inn), Advocate & Solicitor (Singapore). She holds additional certificates in Private Banking and Real Estate Finance.

Research focuses on global secured transactions law, trade finance modernization, consumer protection in finance, and ASEAN services trade liberalization under GATS. She has published extensively, including landmark books like Secured Transactions Law in Asia (2021) and Trade Finance: Technology, Innovation and Documentary Credits (2021). She chairs UNIDROIT’s Model Law on Warehouse Receipts working group and advises Singapore’s legal reforms.

Professional roles include Senate membership at the Singapore Academy of Law, accreditation work for legal education, and policy contributions to the Ministry of Law and Consumer Protection Act reforms. She has held visiting professorships at University of Aix-Marseille III, Harvard, and Georgetown, and teaches at East China University of Political Science and Law.

Recent activities include speaking at APEC forums, UNIDROIT conferences, and ASEAN legal seminars. Her work bridges academic research with practical legal training, shaping regional and global financial law frameworks.