10:30–11:15
Keynote 1: The Role of Reference Datasets and Biases of LLMs for Banking and Investment
Prof. Charles-Albert Lehalle, CMAP, École Polytechnique, Institut Polytechnique de Paris
About the speaker. Member of the Scientific Committee of the AMF, the French financial markets regulator. Co-director, with Prof. Vianney Perchet, of the MScT programme AI for Markets and Quantitative Investment. Leads the Finance Vertical of the AI Factory project (European Commission / France / GENCI) together with Prof. Damien Challet, where they are launching a research project on biases in large language models.
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11:15, 30 minutes
AI and Biodiversity
Prof. Ania Zalewska, University of Leicester School of Business
Artificial intelligence and nature conservation are both becoming defining priorities, and their relationship is far from straightforward. AI promises productivity, innovation and growth, and can help fight climate change through remote sensing, digital monitoring and other data-intensive technologies that make ecological change more observable, biodiversity risks more measurable and environmental outcomes more verifiable. Yet AI’s expansion requires substantial physical infrastructure, particularly data centres, with growing demands for land, energy and water. At the same time, biodiversity loss and climate change are increasing the pressure to protect land, restore ecosystems and reduce demands on natural resources. The pursuit of a digital future could therefore come into direct competition with the pursuit of a nature-positive one. A key question is where data centres should be built: on greenfield sites, or should brownfield land be prioritised? What happens when brownfield sites themselves have significant biodiversity value? And how should environmental costs be weighed against regeneration, employment and other socioeconomic benefits? These questions ultimately become local decisions. National and European governments can set ambitious biodiversity, planning and sustainability policies, but implementation depends on regional authorities and politicians. Does the quality of regional authorities and politicians really matter, and if so, which qualities?
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11:45, 20 minutes
Title to be confirmed
Prof. Huei-Wen Teng, National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University, Taiwan
About the speaker. Associated partner of the MSCA DIGITAL network. Her work applies machine learning to credit card default prediction and evaluates tail risk under Basel standards.
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13:00–13:20
Invited Talk: Digital Assets and Systemic Risk
Dr Roman Matkovskyy, Associate Professor, Rennes School of Business
About the speaker. Associate Professor of Finance and Geopolitics at Rennes School of Business, and a Management Committee member of the CA19130 FinAI COST Action. His research covers digital finance, cryptocurrency markets, systemic risk and financial market interdependencies.
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13:40, 30 minutes
Title to be confirmed
Ólöf Jónsdóttir, Managing Director of Personal Banking, Íslandsbanki
About the speaker. Managing Director of Personal Banking at Íslandsbanki, bringing extensive senior leadership experience from the Icelandic financial sector.
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14:10, 20 minutes
Contingent capital: A tale of two valuations
Prof. Tian-Shyr Dai, National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University, Taiwan
This study investigates the valuation gap between buyers and sellers of insurers' contingent capital, driven by asymmetric exposures to tax benefits, capital injections and bankruptcy costs. We develop a novel Twin-Tree Model with Jumps (TTMJ) that models the insurer's asset value dynamics by incorporating catastrophe risk, insolvency risk and contractual features observed in practice. Using U.S. earthquake loss data and a representative real-world contract, we show that early exercise and net-worth provisions significantly affect contract tradability by expanding the range of mutually acceptable prices. Our results provide new insights into reconciling valuation asymmetries and offer guidance for designing contingent capital instruments that enhance insurers' financial resilience under catastrophe risk.
About the speaker. Tian-Shyr Dai received his Ph.D. from the Department of Computer Science, National Taiwan University. He chaired the Department of Information Management and Finance from 2016 to 2019 and directed the Taiwan Association of Business School from 2018 to 2020. He is currently Full Professor in the Department of Information Management and Finance at National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University, and a Research Member of the Risk and Insurance Research Center at NCCU. He has been a Senior Fellow of AdvanceHE and a Faculty Member of Beta Gamma Sigma since 2021. His research interests include financial engineering and financial technology.
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14:30, 20 minutes
Linking 10-K risk disclosures to macro news headlines
Dennis Hoffmann, University of Twente
About the speaker. PhD candidate at the University of Twente, Faculty of Behavioural, Management and Social Sciences, in collaboration with Quoniam Asset Management.
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