University of Twente - ING Collaboration on Artificial Intelligence in Finance

“The collaboration between ING and UT has proven to be highly beneficial for all partners involved, significantly expanding ING’s access to a highly educated talent base.”

Leon Dusee, COO Risk Department, ING

Start of Our Collaboration

The University of Twente and the ING Group have put their signatures to a five-year collaboration agreement covering artificial intelligence and data science in the financial world. The partnership was celebrated at FinanceCom 2022, a leading-edge conference hosted by UT. It marks the first time that this international congress in finance and fintech has been held in the Netherlands.

“We in the Netherlands have been pioneering and innovating applications involving artificial intelligence for quite some time. There are lots of opportunities in the financial sector. But we also ran into a problem: there’s an enormous demand for talent in the business community and academic world. Our partnership will help alleviate this shortage. The fact that ING will be actively investing in UT’s academic knowledge already says a lot.”

Prof. Dr. Jos van Hillegersberg

Our Mission

Personalized Financial Service with AI

For this partnership, final-year undergraduates, researchers and doctoral candidates will be focusing on the application of complex datasets in the financial sector.

“That might mean analysis of credit risks, detecting fraud, or advising the bank’s customers about investing, but it might also deal with how to use AI for the bank’s individual customers. Customers have to get back the feeling that they are accessing a personal service. The big banks are closing more and more of their offices and offering their customers services through a standard banking package. It’s not personalised anymore. But with AI we can change that. Some of it is already happening, but the performance of algorithms is still in its infancy. And there are many ethical and law-related issues in the financial world. What are algorithms allowed to do, and what are they not allowed to do? And who is responsible if things go wrong? In short: there’s still a lot to be done.”

Prof. Dr. Jos van Hillegersberg

UT - Innovation through Technology

Guiding our AI in Finance initiative is a team of distinguished academics and industry experts. Key figures from the University of Twente:

Prof. Dr. Jos van Hillegersberg - Prof. dr. Jos van Hillegersberg is the scientific director of JADS (Jheronimus Academy of Data Science) and full professor of Implementation and Design of Information systems at the University of Twente. His research is focused on innovative ICT for supply chain systems and for dynamic network organizations. He has more than 30 years of experience in innovative projects, searching for connections between ICT-research and application in industry.

Joerg Osterrieder, Associate Professor of AI and Finance - Dr. Joerg Osterrieder is the Action Chair of the European COST (Cooperation in Science and Technology) Action on Fintech and Artificial Intelligence, with 360 researchers from 51 countries. He is also the coordinator of the MSCA Industrial Doctoral Network on Digital Finance, a European Research and Doctoral Training Programme, with 18 companies and universities from across Europe, including the European Central Bank and the Bank for International Settlements.

Dr. Marcos Machado, Assistant Professor - Dr. Marcos Machado is an Assistant Professor in Business and Information Systems at the University of Twente. His research interests focus on applications of machine learning algorithms, data science, and analytics to solve business problems. He has over seven years of experience working in the Brazilian and Canadian banking industries.

ING - Stay in the Lead

“ING Group has always been in the lead when it comes to financial and technological developments, and we want it to stay that way. That’s the reason we think it’s essential to create a thriving AI ecosystem in the Netherlands that will be meaningful to our final consumers.”

Anand Autar, Former Global Head Analytics Business Development, ING

KickStart AI

The partnership falls under KickStart AI, an initiative backed by five leading Dutch companies for promoting the development of AI in the Netherlands. Ahold Delhaize, ING, KLM, NS and Philips are working together on initiatives geared towards AI education, talent and innovation.

Research Areas

  • Machine Learning for Risk Management - Credit risk, market risk, operational risk
  • Explainable AI - Transparent models for regulatory compliance
  • Data Analytics - Advanced analytics for banking operations
  • Privacy-Preserving ML - Federated learning and synthetic data
  • Natural Language Processing - LLMs for document analysis
  • Reinforcement Learning - Trading strategies and optimization

Our Team

Our team consists of 11 full, associate and assistant professors from the University of Twente, under the lead of prof. dr. Jos van Hillegersberg, as well as more than 22 members from ING across 11 different departments, and 9 MSc students, 1 PhD Candidate cooperating on research with ING.

European Research Networks

  • MSCA Digital Finance - Marie Curie doctoral network
  • COST FinAI - European research cooperation (360 researchers, 51 countries)
  • SNSF Projects - Swiss National Science Foundation grants

Partners

Kickstart AI FIN AI Digital Finance

Contact

For collaboration inquiries, visit our Team page or contact us at the University of Twente.