The financial services and fintech team at Edinburgh Futures Institute works collaboratively with a number of organisations – from global corporates to start-ups and policymakers – to find data-driven, innovative solutions to challenges within the sector.
One such partner is NatWest Group. The bank’s Barry Shields, Head of
Customer Data Science, Retail Analytics & Decisioning, D&A,
Digital X, says:
As a bank, we're passionate about helping our businesses, people and families thrive. We have lots of ideas but we don’t always have all the answers or experts. That’s why working with Edinburgh Futures Institute and the University of Edinburgh is so beneficial. The interdisciplinary approach of Edinburgh Futures Institute has been really helpful. ”
The partnership developed following Barry’s attendance at a tech conference in London about 10 years ago, when he heard a Spotify representative from California talking about their approach to optimising the length of time people spent on the platform. He found out the research came from a paper written in Edinburgh.
“All this academic capability was on my doorstep yet I was flying to London to listen to someone from California,” he says. “I could have knocked next door and found out directly.”
Collaboration and matchmaking
Barry and NatWest Group have since developed a strategic partnership with the financial services and fintech team at Edinburgh Futures Institute and wider teams at the University of Edinburgh, supported by Edinburgh Innovations.
“Edinburgh Futures Institute has been like a giant matchmaker," says Barry. "We had this huge organisation in the bank and a huge university – how did we match people up with the academic expertise they needed? That was the idea behind our collaboration and it’s working really well so far.
I was surprised at the breadth of expertise in the University that we can access. The interdisciplinary approach of Edinburgh Futures Institute has been really helpful. I think we have at least one person from every school involved in our projects.
We share a purpose to help our communities and society thrive and we’ve joined forces to achieve that combined purpose. ”
Climate and generative AI research
Collaborative initiatives have included research projects, training programmes and the NatWest Group’s sponsorship of learning and PhD courses, as well as the Centre for Purpose-Driven Innovation in Banking, launched last year.
“We’ve done a lot together on climate risk and the university has rolled out training for the past three years for all our staff. We couldn’t have done that ourselves.
"We’re also helping businesses transition to net zero, looking at the challenges that different sectors might have to get to net zero and understanding what businesses will win and lose out of that, and how we can help our customers be the winners. For that, there’s so much expertise in the university that we can use and apply.”
Another major area of research has been artificial intelligence (AI), especially generative AI (Gen AI), Barry continues. “One of the issues with AI is, as it becomes more complex, it can give you an answer but you don’t know how it has come up with that answer. If you’re a bank that’s not acceptable – we have to be able to explain our decision-making, that’s a regulatory need.
"We’ve done a lot together on climate risk and the University has rolled out training for the past three years for all our staff.
We’ve a lot to learn there but so does the University and the students. So it’s a really good match – we can learn, share what we’re learning, ask students to look at various research topics and we’ll learn back. ”
Aligning with this, NatWest Group is now a sponsor of the UKRI AI Centre for Doctoral Training in Responsible and Trustworthy in-the-world NLP, based at Edinburgh Futures Institute.
“We’re able to give students real-life cases to work on and help them think, ‘how do you apply this in the real world?’. That’s a big challenge. That centre is to understand not just how you use Gen AI, but how you use it responsibly. That’s where real data really helps.”
Benefits
Other collaborative research areas include quantum machine learning
to help tackle fraud and research into children’s attitudes to finance,
to help NatWest design products and services that will help young people
learn financial responsibility.
“Our purpose is to help people thrive and the strength of the family is really important. But it’s hard for us – and particularly someone like me, who is 55 years old – to imagine what goes through children’s minds, and how you then design products and services to support children. A piggy bank with a savings account is irrelevant now. We wanted an expert view so we asked Edinburgh Futures Institute for help.
“It’s been a real double win – there’s a societal benefit and it benefits us as a business that needs to be sustainable. If we support families, those children will become customers.
“That’s been some of my favourite work with the University. Another project I’ve really liked is work to help customers budget.
"We were sitting on valuable data related to customer transactions. The problem was there were millions of transactions, so it was hard to run calculations on them all. We couldn’t have done that in-house at that time. But we were able to use the University’s supercomputer to categorise transactions and learn from that. Those spending insights are now built in the bank and are an integral part of our app. ”
Barry adds:
Edinburgh Futures Institute has been a brilliant partner. Our purposes are aligned and Edinburgh is our biggest head office. Then there’s all the investment in the Futures Institute and the Bayes Centre, plus the areas of expertise that the University of Edinburgh is famous for. It’s a good match and ticks all the boxes for us."
