On Thursday 3 February 2022, Open Banking pioneer LUXHUB announced a strategic partnership with the University of Luxembourg’s Interdisciplinary Centre for Security, Reliability and Trust (SnT) to create added value services based on financial data.
The partnership is aimed at implementing ground-breaking technology in the field of artificial intelligence (AI) while respecting the industry’s main concerns (i.e. the safety and privacy of sensitive data) through the federated learning model.
"In the era of Open Finance - with financial service companies collaborating, co-creating new products and services by taking advantage of the API economy - it makes sense for them to opt for the federated learning model, and keep building the future of finance. Together", explained Claude Meurisse, COO of LUXHUB.
Federated learning consists of a machine learning procedure, where the goal is to train a high-quality model with data distributed over several independent providers, such that the data remains locked on each provider, and no centralised data storage is actually needed. Federated learning differs from most machine learning models, as it is the algorithm, rather than the data, that travels.
Claude Meurisse noted: "Joint predictive models are shared and created by what is called the federation. And eventually, all participants learn from everyone without learning from anyone".
Through this federated learning model, LUXHUB and SnT will make sure data never leaves the premises of the client / participant, thus guaranteeing security and confidentiality.
"Federated learning allows the training of a model with your own data but without sharing the data with anyone else; you just share updates to a global model. The data stays on each client’s premises - in the case of a bank, down to a single branch - to avoid any risks, but the system allows every participant to leverage the collective intelligence to train the global model. It’s a win-win: everyone is better off by collaborating, while ensuring data security and privacy at the same time", commented Prof. Radu State, Principal Investigator of the project at SnT.
More concretely, participants will power an algorithm, making it more efficient and accurate, allowing financial institutions to take better-informed decisions. The training of the algorithm will be assumed by the LUXHUB team in collaboration with SnT researchers.
Phase 1 of the project will consist of the design and management of a secure federated learning platform. In parallel, the teams will be focusing on several key use cases aimed at benefitting the entire financial services industry, such as fraud detection, anti-money laundering, loan risk prediction and transaction categorisation. The model could then be extended to additional use cases, dealing notably with key compliance topics, among others.
"Leveraging data and the knowledge of SnT researchers, this project with LUXHUB on federated machine learning is highly innovative, aiming at identifying illicit financial activity by enabling shared learning, but without any risk in sharing data. The project outcomes have tremendous potential allowing the design of solutions that leverage data across several stakeholders in a secure and compliant manner", said Björn Ottersten, Director of SnT.
