Cambridge, UK – 7 April 2025 – The Cambridge SupTech Lab proudly welcomes twelve distinguished specialists to its second cohort of the Innovation Leaders Residency programme. Selected through a rigorous and competitive process, participants hail from financial authorities in Brazil, Canada, Ethiopia, Ghana, India, Kenya, Mauritius, Namibia, Pakistan, Peru, Senegal and South Africa.
Over the course of twelve months, these innovation leaders are tackling critical challenges facing their institutions, working towards more inclusive and data-driven financial supervision. The residency provides exclusive mentorships, advanced training to enhance hard and soft skills, and a global peer network to help participants scale their projects for maximum real-world impact.
Among the transformative projects in development are:
- Climate Risk Mapping: Assessing public sentiment to identify reputational and financial risks related to social, environmental, and governance factors.
- Geospatial Insurance Analysis: Uncovering valuable insights and trends to support fair and inclusive insurance coverage.
- AI Model Bias Mitigation: Developing localised approaches to reduce bias in pre-trained AI models used in regulatory environments.
- Moral Suitability Evaluation: Implementing AI systems to evaluate the suitability of financial institution leaders in preventing misconduct.
- Digital Assets Research: Exploring the supervisory landscape with a focus on mobile money operators involved in crypto transactions.
Voices from the Field
Saket Kumar, 2025 Innovation Leader from the Reserve Bank of India shared how focusing on suptech can lead to transformational impacts: “With the advancement of constantly evolving technology, the availability of data has become more structured, faster, richer, and broader. Suptech tools leverage technology to decipher data trends and vulnerabilities, which is transformational both for supervisors as well as for supervised entities. Given the increasing complexity and interdependencies within the financial system, I plan to use cutting-edge statistical and machine learning tools, aided by artificial intelligence, to work on state-of-the-art macro-prudential policy tools for central banks. These tools will help reorient policy frameworks toward forward-looking assessments, which I believe is where suptech can have a truly transformational impact.”
Carine Bastos, 2025 Innovation Leader from the Central Bank of Brazil adds ‘”Investing in suptech is investing in smarter supervision and a more resilient financial system that can adapt to rapid technological and environmental changes. Through the Innovation Leaders Residency, I aim to design tools that enhance ESG oversight, for example, by mapping reputational risks linked to social, climate and environmental concerns.”
Emmanuel Kpikpi, 2025 Innovation Leader from the Bank of Ghana “I look forward to leveraging my knowledge, network, and experience in this program while also gaining insights into new and emerging innovations from global partners across different jurisdictions.”
Advancing Supervisory Excellence
Simone di Castri, Co-head of the Cambridge SupTech Lab, remarked: “The Innovation Leaders Residency cultivates collaborative learning and fosters new approaches in the digital transformation in financial supervision. Building on the success of our first cohort, we are excited to support this new group of leaders in harnessing technology to enhance more inclusive, sustainable and resilient finance sectors worldwide.”
2025 Innovation Leaders Cohort:
- Carine Bastos, Advisor, Banco Central do Brasil
- Emmanuel Kpikpi, Solutions Architect, FinTech Innovations & Promotions, Bank of Ghana
- Faissal Kientore, DevOps Engineer, Central Bank of West African’s Countries (BCEAO)
- Joe van der Lith, Regulatory Specialist, Financial Sector Conduct Authority, South Africa
- Karin Elago, Deputy Director: On-site Examinations, Bank of Namibia
- Kris Wright, Product Strategist and Lead, Forward Lab, Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre of Canada
- Lucero Valderrama Valderrama, Principal Data and Risk Analytics Analyst, Superintendency of Banking, Insurance and Private Pension Funds Peru
- Martha Hailemarian, Senior Advisor to Vice Governor, Financial Instituions, National Bank of Ethiopia
- Raza Bakir Shah, Joint Director – Banking Supervision, State Bank of Pakistan
- Saket Kumar, Assistant General Manager, Department of Regulation, Reserve Bank of India
- Teenoosha Boyjoo, Acting Manager, Financial Services Commission, Mauritius
- Teresa Oino, Assistant Manager, Policy and Strategy, Insurance Regulatory Authority of Kenya
80% of 2025 cohort applicants represent organisations based in low-income or lower-middle-income economies. Applications for the 2026 cohort will open in October 2025.
About the Cambridge SupTech Lab:
The Cambridge SupTech Lab accelerates the digital transformation of financial supervision. Through leadership education, experiential training, research, innovative digital tools, and cutting-edge suptech applications, the Lab empowers financial authorities to build more resilient and inclusive financial ecosystems. Cambridge SupTech Lab is an initiative of the Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance at the University of Cambridge Judge Business School. Learn more at www.cambridgesuptechlab.org.
