New collaboration with the FCA on ethical and regulatory issues concerning the use of AI in the financial sector

Tuesday 16 Jul 2019

The Alan Turing Institute and the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) have launched a joint year-long project around the use of AI in the financial services sector.

Christopher Woolard, Executive Director of Strategy and Competition, FCA, announced the collaboration at the Turing’s ‘AI Ethics in the Financial Sector’ conference, which took place in London on 16 and 17 July 2019. The FCA regulates and supervises the conduct of more than 50,000 financial services firms in the UK and the new project marks the first formal partnership between the Turing and the FCA.

Led by the Turing’s public policy programme, the project will examine current and future uses of AI across the financial services sector, analyse ethical and regulatory questions that arise in this context, and advise on potential strategies for addressing them. In doing so, the joint project will place a special focus on considerations of transparency and explainability. One of its aims will be to move from discussions of general principles for the development and use of algorithmic systems towards a better understanding of the concrete and specific challenges associated with AI use cases in the financial sector, including their implications from a regulatory perspective.

Helen Margetts, Public Policy Programme Director, The Alan Turing Institute, said:

“The use of AI in the financial sector is characterised by a fascinatingly diverse range of applications. It also includes AI use cases with particularly high stakes for consumers and society at large. This makes examining the ethical and regulatory questions that arise in this context a rich as well as an urgent task. I am delighted about our new collaboration with the FCA which will tackle this task head-on.”

Read the full keynote speech from Christopher Woolard, announcing the collaboration.

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