Hi SupTech Community,
Welcome to the 28th issue of the Cambridge SupTech Lab bi-weekly LinkedIn newsletter, a source for updates on recent innovations, breakthroughs, opportunities, upcoming events in the suptech field, and news from the Cambridge SupTech Lab team.
If you would like to flag any items for inclusion in the next newsletter, please email us at cambridgesuptechlab@jbs.cam.ac.uk. Occasionally, we email our global community of supervisors, data scientists, vendors, and suptech experts to share event invites, news, or new courses—subscribe here.
This edition includes news from the Asian Development Bank, Bank of England, Bank for International Settlements, Central Banking, Central Bank of Nigeria, European Banking Authority, European Central Bank , Finextra, Global Government Fintech, Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS), OECD, Regtech Africa, and others.
** SupTech Week 2024, 9 – 13 December **
Explore the rich agenda for the forthcoming SupTech Week 2024!
Virtual Forum: with the World Economic Forum as content partner, the online forum will dive into timely topics that align with the latest trends and innovations in financial supervision, such as GenAI, blockchain, climate risk, consumer protection, AML and cybersecurity. Register here.
- Esteemed speakers include: Alessandra Perrazzelli, Deputy Governor, Banca d’Italia; Minerva Tantoco, former first CTO, City of New York and CEO, City Strategies Toronto; Leonie Dunn, Deputy Governor, Bank of Namibia; Dr. Denny H. Kalyalya, Governor, Bank of Zambia
- Key sessions include: AI beyond the hype; Privacy-preserving algorithms for suptech: Seeing patterns in the dark; Leveraging gender disaggregated data for greater impact in financial inclusion; Advancing regtech & suptech concurrently; Tackling climate risk; Suptech-enhanced cybersecurity supervision and Suptech and AI-powered supervision for digital payments
For a complete overview, go here.
Suptech Innovations
Central Banking announces the winners of its seventh annual “FinTech & RegTech Global Awards”, recognising excellence in the central banking community. The awards present the pioneering use of technology by central banks and their partners in areas such as sustainable finance, the quantum economy, offline central bank digital currency payments, data automation to inform monetary policy, artificial intelligence (AI) risks to financial stability and the structured sharing of intelligence to tackle financial crime. Some notable suptech initiatives and innovations that have bagged an award include:
- Artificial intelligence initiative: Bank of Portugal
- Central bank digital currency (CBDC) initiative: Central Bank of Hungary
- Cyber resilience initiative: UK Financial Conduct Authority and World Economic Forum
- Global impact award: Swiss National Bank
- Global technology partner: ACI Worldwide
- Pioneer award: Bank of Namibia
- Sustainability initiative: Bank for International Settlements (BIS)
Central Banking & Technology
Banque de France (BdF) and Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) conduct groundbreaking post-quantum cryptography (PQC) experiment to enhance communication security. Conducted across continents over conventional internet technologies, the PQC experiment aimed to strengthen communication and data security in the face of quantum computing advancements. The success of this experiment marks a crucial milestone in the evolution of protecting international electronic communications against the cybersecurity threats posed by quantum computing. Read more here.
The Nexus Scheme Organisation (NSO), a new entity to be formed by the five central bank partners in Project Nexus, will manage its live implementation. Project Nexus aims to enable cross-border payments by connecting multiple domestic instant payment systems (IPS) globally. The project has produced a comprehensive blueprint for standardising the way that domestic IPS connect, lowering the obstacles for countries that wish to offer instant cross-border payments. The BIS Innovation Hub (BISIH) Singapore Centre is supporting the central banks and IPS operators of India, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand as they work towards live implementation of Nexus. The five central bank partners have agreed to establish NSO to manage the project’s live implementation stages. Read more here.
The majority of jurisdictions have enacted regulations, issued guidelines, or developed strategic roadmaps for climate-related disclosures, according to the Financial Stability Board (FSB). Nearly three-fourths of FSB jurisdictions have already introduced or proposed climate-related disclosure requirements based on the International Sustainability Standards Board (ISSB) Standards and the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD) recommendations. Several jurisdictions have also outlined specific actions taken to establish assurance requirements, aiming to improve the reliability and decision-making value of climate-related disclosures. Read more here.
Asia Pacific (APAC) regulators conduct cloud crisis management exercise. APAC financial regulators and global cloud service providers (CSPs) in the Financial Sector Cloud Resilience Forum, established by the MAS, conducted a crisis management tabletop exercise on 6 November 2024. The exercise, the first of its kind in the region, simulated a severe public cloud incident disrupting multiple financial sectors across the region. It enabled Forum members to strengthen their mutual understanding of one another’s incident response playbooks, identify possible supervisory interventions, and collaborate on measures to mitigate the impact of a severe public cloud service disruption. Read more here.
Bank of England (BoE) to launch an AI Consortium with private sector and AI experts to explore AI’s benefits and manage risks to financial stability. In a speech at the HKMA-BIS Joint Conference, Ms. Sarah Breeden, Deputy Governor for Financial Stability, emphasised the need to promote industry best practices and assess whether additional regulatory guidelines are required. The BoE’s Financial Policy Committee (FPC) will publish an assessment of AI’s impact on financial stability and outline how it will monitor emerging risks. They will collaborate with the UK Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), the government, and international partners to ensure the safe adoption of AI for growth. Read more here.
UK financial regulators have introduced new rules for overseeing critical third-party tech providers. The FCA and BoE’s move responds to concerns about financial firms’ heavy reliance on a small number of tech providers. While these providers can boost sector competitiveness, disruptions — such as cyber-attacks, natural disasters, or power outages —pose consumer risks and could destabilise the UK’s financial system. Under the new rules, tech providers classified as “Critical Third Parties” (CTPs) will be subject to partial oversight by the FCA and BoE. Read more here.
Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) publishes paper on assessing potential future AI risks, benefits and policy imperatives. AI technologies’ rapid evolution requires policymakers to proactively address the changes they bring. To support this, the OECD’s Expert Group on AI Futures was formed to anticipate AI’s impacts. This report draws on their insights, highlighting ten key benefits — such as enhanced scientific progress, productivity, and forecasting — and ten significant risks, including cyberattacks, disinformation, power concentration, and social inequality. It also outlines ten policy priorities, like more explicit liability rules, AI safety investment, and robust risk management. The report reviews current governance efforts and identifies remaining gaps. Read more here.
KPMG USA publishes guide on AI and automation in financial reporting. The new in-depth guide offers insights for responsibly integrating AI into financial reporting, including governance and internal control considerations. It highlights the importance of addressing governance, risk, and control (GRC) within a unified framework for integrating responsible, ethical, and sustainable AI/ML systems. This approach aims to automate processes and build intelligent infrastructure that enhances efficiency, productivity, and performance through disciplined, enterprise-driven leadership. Ultimately, it supports effective human-AI adoption, strengthens the GRC ecosystem, and ensures compliance with internal controls and regulatory reporting. Read more here.
The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) and its partners launched the Women’s Financial Inclusion (WFI) Dashboard and the Women Entrepreneurs Finance Code (We-Fi Code) at the second International Financial Inclusion Conference in Lagos. Themed “Inclusive Growth: Harnessing Inclusion for Economic Development,” the event introduced these initiatives in response to a diagnostic study on the collection and use of gender-disaggregated data to guide policy and product development aimed at advancing women’s financial inclusion. It would serve as a repository of data on women’s access to and usage of financial products and services in Nigeria and would leverage existing databases on financial inclusion, allowing regulators and policymakers to identify and prioritise gender gaps in financial services. Read more here.
As highlighted by Central Banking, strategic planning and capacity building are key drivers in transforming supervisory practices. The adoption of suptech is rapidly advancing, with numerous reports showcasing this trend over the past few years. Most financial authorities have implemented suptech solutions for data visualisation, regulatory reporting, financial risk assessment, and supervisory automation. Supervisory bodies increasingly focus on developing clear suptech strategies and strengthening internal capacity to modernise operations, ensuring that technology aligns with long-term statutory and supervisory objectives. Read more here.
Digital Impact Alliance (DIAL) released a final report on the Joint Learning Network on Unlocking Data for Climate Action (Climate Data JLN). As part of the Green Digital Action track at COP28, DIAL launched the Climate Data JLN. The Climate Data JLN advances expert collaboration on climate action, digital public infrastructure, data exchange, and governance. The JLN has published research on data trusts, open transaction networks, and data spaces through this year-long research effort. Read more here.
United Kingdom’s (UK’s) ‘National Payments Vision’ aims to tackle regulatory ‘congestion’. The UK government has published the National Payments Vision, setting out its ambitions for the country’s payments sector to deliver world-leading payments and support the growth mission. The 40-page document responds to the findings of an independent review published last year that highlighted regulatory ‘congestion’. Read more here.
European Central Bank (ECB) invites expressions of interest for digital euro innovation partnerships. As part of preparations for the digital euro, the ECB is launching a platform to collaborate with stakeholders, including merchants, banks, other payment service providers, fintech companies, financial institutions, research institutes, technical experts and universities. The partnerships aim to explore the technical implementation of “conditional payments,” test digital euro interfaces, and discuss new use cases. Applications are open until November 29, 2024. Read more here.
Events
Asian Development Bank (ADBI) and Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance (CCAF) collaboration network course on “Leading Transformation: Product and Organizational Innovation in Asia and the Pacific” to take place between 4th and 13th December 2024. To shape the modernisation journey of organisations and upgrade policy makers’ knowledge, ADBI, in collaboration with Cambridge University’s CCAF and Cambridge Judge Business School Executive Education Limited (JBSEEL), is offering a 6-week online course on Leading Transformation: Product and Organizational Innovation. The course is designed to deliver technical support to government officials from Asia and the Pacific. Read more here.
AIxADB event: Harnessing the power of artificial intelligence for development. AIxADB serves as a platform for collaboration and knowledge exchange to explore cutting-edge solutions, learn from successful case studies, identify pilots for implementation under the Asian Development Bank (ADB) AI sandbox program, and support developing member countries (DMCs) to manage the transition for AI adoption through policies, skilling, and capacity enhancement. This event happened alongside the Singapore Fintech Festival (SFF) on 4th and 5th November and highlighted AI’s transformative potential in guiding the ADB’s DMCs toward a prosperous, inclusive, resilient, and sustainable future. Read more here.
NextGenAI: OpenAI and others are facing delays in training new large language models (LLMs) due to high costs, hardware failures, and power shortages. Finextra’s NextGenAI event in London on 26 November will explore these challenges, along with opportunities and the future of AI in financial services. Companies are struggling to build LLMs that surpass existing models like ChatGPT-4, as they face escalating training expenses and limited access to new data. To address these hurdles, researchers are investigating innovative solutions like ‘test-time compute’ to enhance AI performance during the ‘inference’ phase. Read more here.
Transforming Data Collection (TDC) Town Hall on December 5th. The joint transformation programme will host a Town Hall at the Bank of England, featuring updates from senior leadership and a demo of the Financial Conduct Authority’s (FCA’s) new firm portal, ‘My FCA.’ Dawd Haque, Chair of the Industry Data Standards Committee (IDSC), will also discuss the committee’s work and its role in shaping data standards. The event will conclude with a networking session, offering attendees the chance to connect with TDC leadership, programme teams, and other stakeholders. Read more here.
Global community advances the future of data for sustainable development at fifth United Nations World Data Forum (UNWDF). Following the outcome of the Summit of the Future, the fifth UN World Data Forum was held in Medellín, Colombia to accelerate progress on sustainable development by leveraging the transformative power of data. More than 3,000 data experts, leaders, entrepreneurs, youth, academics, representatives from governments and civil society from over 120 countries gathered from 12th to 15th November to promote tangible solutions; covering topics including youth, gender, climate and environment, digitalisation and modernization, capacity development, data literacy and data science including AI. Read more here.
The 2024 European Banking Authority (EBA) Policy Research Workshop focused on the boundaries of banking regulation. The event, which took place on 6th and 7th November, discussed and explored policies that can ensure innovation in a context of competition and risk arbitrage, while ensuring financial stability. From the perspective of financial regulation, the boundaries of banking regulation raise important research questions about the adequacy of the present regulatory regime. Read more here.
