Output and Impact

Our work in the AI in Finance project is dedicated to making a tangible impact on both the financial industry and society as a whole. By leveraging advanced AI technologies and fostering collaboration between academic and industry leaders, we are driving innovations that not only enhance financial services but also promote ethical and inclusive practices. This project is about creating solutions that have a real, positive effect on people's lives and the broader financial ecosystem

Executive Summary – 2022

Thesis supervision

• 3 MSc theses + 1 BSc thesis ongoing with ING
• 26 additional BSc/ MSc theses

Coordinating/teaching in four Msc courses

• Information Systems for the Financial Services Industry
• Reinforcement Learning with Applications
• Smart Industry Systems
• Applications of AI in Business (newly designed)
• 4+ Invited guest lectures

Research and Research dissemination

• 15 Invited talks in +7 different countries
• 10+ conference scientific committees, conference (session) chairs and related
• Six papers published in high-rated journals
• Organizing and hosting FinanceCom 2022

European research grant proposals

• Marie-Sklowdowska Curie Doctoral Network on Digital Finance (Coordinator: UT)
• Two Marie-Sklowdowska Curie – Postdoctoral Fellowships
• ERASMUS – Partnerships for Innovation

Research projects

• Action Chair: COST Action CA19130 Fintech and Artificial Intelligence in Finance
• Digital Finance – Reaching new frontiers
• Text-based features for predicting customer value

Executive Summary – 2023

MSc thesis supervision (joint with ING)

• 4 ongoing
• 2 new ones for Fall 2023

Coordinating/teaching in four MSc courses

• Information Systems for the Financial Services Industry
• Reinforcement Learning with Applications
• Smart Industry Systems
• Applications of AI in Business (New)

Conference chairs

• Doctoral Training School on Artificial Intelligence in Finance at UT, June 19 – 23, 2023
• Industry-Academia Workshop (half-day) at ING?
• COST FinAI Meets Brussels and the European Commission, May 15, 2023 -- May 16, 2023, Brussels, Belgium
• Data Science Competition / Hackathon
• Several more across Europe

European research grant proposals

• COST Action on Digital Finance
• Marie-Sklowdowska Curie Doctoral Network on Digital Finance (Coordinator: UT)
• Higher Education Initiative (HEI) on DeepTech
• Erasmus+ Capacity Building, Partnerships for transformation in higher education
• VENI (Dutch National Science Organization)

Research and research coordination

• Action Chair: COST Action CA19130 Fintech and Artificial Intelligence in Finance
• Academic papers

Conference session chair + talks

• INFORMS (USA, October 2023)
• IFORS (Chile, July 2023) 
• Many more across Europe

Course Involvement

• Information Systems for the Financial Services Industry 
• Reinforcement Learning with Applications 
• Smart Industry Systems 
• Applications of AI in Business 

*Secondary supervision

Phd (co-)Thesis Supervision And Examiner (2022)

Completed

• Weilong Fu, Innovative Derivate Pricing and Time Series Simulation techniques via machine and deep learning, member of the PhD Committee and cosupervisor, main supervisor: Prof. Dr. Ali Hirsa, Columbia University, US, June 2022
• Patchara Santawisook, April 2021 until August 2022, member of the PhD Committee, main supervisor: Prof. Dr. Stephan Sturm, Worcester Polytechnic University (WPI), US

On-going

• Sebastian Singer, 2021 - 2026, The Role of Equity Correlations in Financial Crises - Empirical Findings, Predictions and Agent-Based Simulations, member of the PhD Committee, main supervisor: Prof. Dr. Ronald Hochreiter, WU Vienna, Austria
• Yiting Liu, 2022 – 2026, (co-) supervisor
• Lennart Baals, 2022 – 2026, (co-) supervisor

Member of the Habilitation Committee

Member of the Habilitation committee of Ing. Tomáš Plíhal, Ph.D. Finance, January 2023

Department of Finance, Faculty of Economics and Administration, Masaryk University.
Public lecture: FX market volatility modelling: Can we use low frequency data?
Habilitation Board members:

Chair: prof. Ing. Eva Horvátová, CSc., Faculty of Economics and Administration, Masaryk University;

Members

• Prof. Roman Horváth, MA, Ph.D. Institute of Economic Studies, Faculty of Social Sciences, Charles University;
• Prof. Dr. Joerg Osterrieder, University of Twente;
• Prof. Dr. Natalie Packham, Berlin School of Economics and Law;
• Doc. Ing. Eduard Baumöhl, PhD. Faculty of Economics and Administration, Masaryk University

Research Activities 2022

Publications

• Machado, M. R., & Karray, S. (2022). Applying hybrid machine learning algorithms to assess customer riskadjusted revenue in the financial industry. Electronic Commerce Research and Applications, 101202.
• Machado, M. R., & Karray, S. (2022). Assessing credit risk of commercial customers using hybrid machine learning algorithms. Expert Systems with Applications, 200, 116889.
• Machado, M. R., & Karray, S. (2022). Integrating Customer Portfolio Theory and the Multiple Sources of Risk Approaches to Model Risk-Adjusted Revenue. IFAC-Papers OnLine, 55(16), 356-363.
• B. Hadji Misheva, D. Jaggi, J. Posth, T. Gramespacher, J. Osterrieder, Audience-dependent Explanations for AI-based Risk Management Tools: A Survey, Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence, 186, 2022
• Deep reinforcement learning on a multi-asset environment for trading, Authors: Ali Hirsa, Joerg Osterrieder, Branka Hadji Misheva, Jan-Alexander Posth, MDPI Special Issue, forth-coming, 2023
• J. Osterrieder, Review and discussion of “Programmable Money: Next-Generation Blockchain-Based Conditional Payments" by I. Weber and M. Staples, Digital Finance, 2022
• Digital Finance – Reaching New Frontiers, Joerg Osterrieder, Marcos Machado, Branka Hadji Misheva, Open Research Europe, forth-coming, 2023

Working papers

• A. Hirsa, J. Osterrieder, B. Hadji-Misheva, and J.-A. Posth. Deep reinforcement learning on a multi-asset environment for trading. arXiv preprint arXiv:2106.08437, 2021.
• B. H. Misheva, J. Osterrieder, A. Hirsa, O. Kulkarni, and S. F. Lin. Explainable AI in credit risk management. arXiv preprint arXiv:2103.00949, 2021.
• J. Osterrieder, The Efficient Market Hypothesis in Cryptocurrency markets
• M. Machado, Feature Engineering versus Green AI: Applications of Machine Learning Models to Support Analysis and Decisions on This Trade-Off

Invited Talks

• October 11, 2022, Panelists, 11th European Financial Regulation Conference, Digital transformation of EU’s financial markets,
• October 5 - 7, 2022, COST FinAI Management Commitee Meeting, Utrecht, the Netherlands
• September 23, 2022, Invited Honorary Speaker, Artificial Intelligence in Finance, [FinTech Days Tirana: Digital Transformation: Where Tech meets Finance], Tirana, Albania, opening the conference together with the Major of Tirana and the Vice-Governor of the Central Bank of Albania
• September 22, 2022, Moderator of the Session: Fintech: challenges and opportunities – Ongoing COST FinAI projects session
• August 24, 2022, Fintech and Artificial Intelligence, Cooperation between University of Twente and ING Group
• June 16 - 17, 2022, Co-Chair, Digital Disruption in Financial Markets Roundtable, A workshop in the framework of ICESS (5th conference on economics and social sciences) 2022, Bucharest, Romania
• June 16 - 17, 2022, The European COST Action Fintech and Artificial Intelligence in Finance - A History and Definition of Artificial Intelligence, Digital Disruption in Financial Markets Roundtable
• June 9, 2022, Artificial Intelligence in Finance - Data challenges and biases, Putting Science Into Standards workshop on Data quality requirements for inclusive, non-biased and trustworthy Artificial Intelligence, organized by the EC’s Joint Research Centre (JRC)
• May 16 - 17, 2022, COST Action Fintech and Artificial Intelligence in Finance - An introduction, Diversity challenges and opportunities in FinTech, University of Naples Federico II, Italy
• May 16 - 17, 2022, Welcome Address and Session Chair, Diversity challenges and opportunities in FinTech, University of Naples Federico II, Italy
• May 5-6, 2022, Machine learning and artificial intelligence in Finance – with applications to optimal trading strategies, Technology, Innovation and Stability: New Directions in Finance, Zagreb, Croatia, Faculty of Economics and Business, University of Zagreb, Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts and COST Action CA19130
• February 14 -17, 2022, Invited Keynote Speech, Bank for International Settlements, Irving Fisher Committee on Central Bank Statistisk, IFC workshop on "Data science in central banking: Applications and Tools, Fintech and Artificial Intelligence in Finance - An Overview
• December 18, 2022, Generative Adversarial Networks for Finance, Invited talk, Bits and Blocks (Blockchain) Workshop 2021, American University of Sharjah, UAE
• July 2022, Espoo, Finland. Applications of Topic Modelling to Assess Customer Value in the Finance Industry
• July 2022, IFAC/CAO, Sur-gif-Yvette, France. Integration of Customer Portfolio Theory and Multiple Sources of Risk to Assess Customer Value in the Finance Industry

EU COST ACTION Fintech and Artifical Intelligence in Finance

One of the largest and the most active COST Action in Europe

Roles and responsiblities 

• Action Chair
• Member of the Evaluation committee for shortterm scientific missions and virtual mobility grants
• Management Committee member for Netherlands 

Network

• > 270 researchers in Europe
• 39 European Countries + 10 International Countries
• > 2000 members on meetup AI in Finance
• > 6000 total participants at research events Activities
• Two-year progress report successfully completed
• Work and Budget Plan for 2023 approved (200k EUR)
• > 150 conferences and workshops in 2021 and 2022

COST Dissimenation and Outreach

Academic papers (entire network)

• 49461 citations
• h-index 99
• I10-index 611
• 4500 citations in 2021
• 5000 citations in 2022

Research ApplicatIons (Selection)

Marie-Sklowdowska Curie Doctoral Network on Digital Finance (Coordinator: UT), November 2022

• Eight European Universities (WU Vienna, HU Berlin, University of Twente, Bucharest University of Economic Studies, Babes-Bolyai University, Bern Business School, Kaunas University of Technology and University of Naples)
• Four international corporations (Deloitte, Swedbank, Intesa Sanpaolo and Raiffeisen Bank)
• Two SMEs (Cardo AI and Royalton Partners)
• Three international research centres (ARC Greece, EIT Digital and Fraunhofer Institute)
• European Central Bank

Erasmus+ Alliance for Innovation, LaunchPad for Innovation in FinTech through academia-industry alliances, September 2022

• Work package leader for LaunchPad framework and methodology for collaboration between industry and academia in FinTech
• Consortium members from Netherlands, France, Estonia, Hungary, Malta

EU MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowship (Ioanna Coita, Marcos Machado)

Erasmus+, Blended Intensive Programme, Methods for Fintech and Artificial Intelligence in Finance

• University of Naples Federico II; University of Twente; WU Vienna University; Babes-Bolyai University; University College Dublin; University of Economics, Bratislava

COST Action on Digital Finance

• 80 researchers from 20 European Countries

Marie-Sklowdowska Curie Doctoral Network on Digital Finance (Coordinator: UT), 2023

• Consortium of eight universities, six companies, three research centres and the European Central Bank Higher Education Initiative (HEI) on DeepTech
• DeepTech, Training and Entrepreneurship Support Activities in Digital Transformation and Sustainable Development.

University of Twente and six international partners Erasmus+, Capacity Building, Partnerships for transformation in higher education

Talks, Conference (co-)Organization, Scientific Committees (2023)

• Diversity challenges and stakeholders' engagement, February 1, 2023 -- February 2, 2023, Cluj Napoca, Romania
• Diversity challenges for a sustainable Fintech, April 13, 2023 -- April 14, 2023, Pavia, Italy
• Fintech and AI in Finance: Training School for the latest technologies and upcoming challenges , April 26, 2023 -- April 28, 2023, Tirana, Albania
• COST FinAI Meets Brussels, May 15, 2023 -- May 16, 2023, Brussels, Belgium
• Women in Fintech and AI (3rd edition), June 1, 2023 -- June 2, 2023, Coimbra, Portugal
• Fintech companies and regulators in CA19130, June 16, 2023 -- June 16, 2023, Bucharest, Romania
• Fintech and AI in Finance Training School, June 19, 2023 -- June 23, 2023, Enschede, Netherlands
• Annual ECMI Conference on Mathematics for Industry, June 26 - 30, Wroclaw, Poland.
• Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence and Data Protection in Fintech Conference, July 6, 2023 -- July 8, 2023, Dublin, Ireland
• Fintech and AI in Finance, July 10, 2023 -- July 11, 2023, Helsinki, Finland
• Training school "Data science for sustainable economics and finance", August 28, 2023 -- September 1, 2023, Berlin, Germany
• Advanced Statistical Modelling for Fintech, financial inclusion and inequality, September 13, 2023 -- September 15, 2023, Naples, Italy
• Annual Fintech and AI in Finance MC Meeting, September 27, 2023 -- September 28, 2023, Bern, Switzerland
• INFORMS Annual Meeting, 15-18 October 2023, Phoenix, AZ, USA