Open Source in Finance Forum London 2024

The AI Readiness SIG (special interest group) launched at the beginning of May 2024 as FINOS Member Only SIG, with the goals of mutually developing a governance framework that manages the on-boarding, development of, and running AI-based solutions within financial services organizations - allowing financial services organizations to unlock the potential of this disruptive technology in a safe, trustworthy and compliant way. This panel may discuss, among other ideas:

• How do banks address not only the technological challenges created by AI adoption, but how to also prepare to address the impending regulations that financial regulators will impose on FS organizations, as the regulators try to understand the technology as well. Because as an industry we share unique challenges that the vendors, academics, and startups are not going to solve for us on their own.
• How generative AI presents some new challenges that existing, mature on-boarding technologies in banks may not be well suited to addressing
• Starting to define ‘safe and responsible” use of AI (where safety considers both the customer and the bank)
• Considerations to be made for use-case driven risk modeling, threat analysis, mitigation strategies, and alignment with regulatory expectations.
• Forward thinking on how FS organizations attempt to rapidly adopt new technologies as they emerge
• Next steps a SIG should look at to advance quickly, but safely through this new minefield

Real-world asset tokenization (RWA), or the digitization of physical or traditional financial assets represented on a blockchain, is gaining significant traction across industries. Led by organizations such as abrdn, alongside numerous web3 projects, 2024 is expected to be the breakout year for RWA.

Tokenization has the potential to change asset ownership, trading, and management as we know it - providing benefits such as enhanced liquidity, transparency, and efficiency. This is why leading organizations across traditional finance, real estate, payments, and other industries are experimenting with and implementing this powerful functionality.

This keynote will explore the current state of RWA today and its potential future, including the opportunities and challenges in implementing RWA. Join us as we explore the new frontier of finance and investment, where real-world assets converge with blockchain technology to reshape the global economy.

Speakers will discuss urgent challenges faced by the financial sector and companies across the economy in compliance, risk management, and solutions investments related to the climate and biodiversity crises and other urgent sustainability problems.  As longtime members of both OS-Climate and FINOS, Goldman Sachs and Red Hat will describe how the combined strengths of the two communities working together will magnify their ability to enable development of data, analytics, modeling, and regulatory solutions.  Capgemini will discuss how it and the growing group of technology and service providers in the communities can drive widespread adoption of the OS-C and FINOS open source technologies by their customers across financial services and business.  The speakers will address how all this together will generate business value for members, customers, and stakeholders of OS-Climate and FINOS while also delivering greater climate and sustainability impact.  

Diversity is a cornerstone of innovation, driving better outcomes in technology and innovation. Despite the known benefits, gender diversity and equity continue to pose challenges in software development in financial services and beyond. Open Source is a crucial space for addressing algorithmic fairness, and FSIs have an outsized influence on society, so focusing on this sector is set to be game-changing.
As the Open Source Foundation for Fintech and part of the Linux Foundation, FINOS has a strategic DEI initiative focused on how financial services & open source communities can best adapt to tackle these issues. Since launching in 2022, the DEI SIG has achieved strong momentum, increasing awareness and the participation of underrepresented groups at our annual & community events. For 2024, we have set further goals to create expanded SIG leadership and contributor opportunities, prioritize plans to develop, advance, and retain diverse talent, and ensure that FINOS projects and software development are inclusive and diverse.
Our panel will explore strategies and actions to foster meaningful participation, create inclusive environments, and address the biases that having non-diverse teams and skewed data can unintentionally drive into software applications and AI models. Drawing on the best practices of our members and AI fairness/accessibility experts, FINOS will share best practices on tackling bias around new Gen AI models and software to avoid bias, drive inclusion and ensure conformance to regulation such as the ethical and responsibility standards set forth in the AI Act and beyond. Equally, we will draw on FINOS' forthcoming AI and DEI work, bringing together FSIs and tech players to ensure that trust, inclusion, and safety are at the heart of AI and software development and raising the bar towards a more equitable and inclusive future in tech.

NatWest Group provides engineers with the latest tools and mechanisms that enable them to make informed choices about how software is architected and delivered by leveraging its Enterprise Engineering and Hosting Solutions capabilities. During this keynote, Ted will explore how NatWest Group is adopting an “Open Source First” approach to engineering through the adoption of Git Proxy for external OSS contribution and by leveraging Open Source licenses to provide more engineering solutions to NatWest Group teams.