AI4Fintech

AI4FinTech is an initiative of the University of Amsterdam, connecting expertise in Artificial Intelligence and Financial Technology. We aim to establish Amsterdam as a global hub for AI-driven research and innovation in FinTech.

Van fraudedetectie tot risicobeheer, AI4FinTech stimuleert de ontwikkeling van AI-gestuurde oplossingen voor financiële diensten, compliance en duurzame financiën.

Our core activities

AI4FinTech collaborates with academic institutions, banks, fintech companies, and regulatory agencies to develop AI solutions that are directly applicable in the financial sector. Our collaborations ensure that our research aligns with the sector’s needs and contributes to a safer and more transparent financial world.

AI Research for FinTech

We develop AI methodologies tailored for financial applications and publish in leading academic journals and conferences.

Cases

Projects & activities

Advancing Machine Learning Methods for High-Frequency Financial Time-Series Data

AI Data Quality Systems in the Financial Sector

Artificial Intelligence for Due-Diligence Analysis

Bridging Tabular, Graph and Relational Foundation models

Data-Driven Mathematical Modelling and Computational Methods for Pricing and Hedging Renewable Energy Contracts

ESG Regulation Impact on Financial Stability

HyperMining: Explainable Anti-Money Laundering

Identifying Causal Drivers of User Behaviour in Transaction Processes through Data Reuse and Targeted A/B Testing

Knowledge-Driven Learning for XAI in Fraud Detection

Mechanistic Interpretability for Tabular Transformers

News

Service Sector

UvA researchers develop method to ensure semantic integrity in synthetic data

Researchers at the University of Amsterdam have published Latent Semantic Regularization (LSR), a framework that guides generative models to produce semantically coherent data in critical domains such as finance and healthcare.

28 May 2026

Service Sector

UvA researchers present interpretable classification model at ICML 2026

AI4Fintech researchers Adia Lumadjeng and Erman Acar have developed ECSEL, a method that makes classification models transparent by explaining decisions through signomial equations.

28 May 2026

Society

UvA research exposes inconsistencies in multimodal AI models

Researchers at the University of Amsterdam show that multimodal language models give different answers to the same content depending on the modality, raising questions about the reliability of these systems.

28 May 2026

Society

Lorentz Center accepts workshop proposal on climate negotiation and fair climate policy

An international team of researchers, including Erman Acar from the University of Amsterdam, will organize a Lorentz Center workshop on the role of artificial intelligence in climate negotiation and fair climate policy.

28 May 2026

Service Sector

The Optiver & AI4Fintech Trading Academy at University of Amsterdam

AI4FinTech is excited to announce the launch of the Optiver & University of Amsterdam (UvA) Trading Academy, an exclusive educational program organized jointly with Optiver for students at the University of Amsterdam.

9 March 2026

Five Year Investment in Responsible AI Research – KPMG and AI4FinTech

8 January 2025

AI4Fintech Community Kicks Off with Euronext Gong Ceremony and Thought-Provoking Event

7 October 2024

Our team

Management

Prof. dr. Drona Kandhai

Scientific Director

Drona Kandhai is a Professor of Data-Driven Computational Finance at the Computational Science Lab and the Stochastics group of the University of Amsterdam. He has been active in the financial sector for over twenty years, working on the validation, development, and integration of pricing and risk models into IT systems.

Prof. dr. Sander Klous

Scientific Director

Sander Klous is a Full Professor of AI & Audit at the University of Amsterdam. He leads the Complex Cyber Infrastructures group at the Informatics Institute and serves as the scientific director of AI4FinTech.

Dr. rer. nat. Erman Acar

Program Manager

Erman Acar is an Assistant Professor of Explainable AI (XAI) in Finance at the Institute for Logic, Language and Computation (ILLC) and the Informatics Institute (IvI) of the University of Amsterdam. His research focuses on neurosymbolic AI, explainability and interpretability of AI systems, computational logic, and multi-agent systems, with applications in financial technologies.

Dr. Sven Karbach

Program manager

Sven Karbach is an Assistant Professor of Data-Driven Mathematical Modelling and Computing in Finance at the Informatics Institute and the Korteweg–de Vries Institute for Mathematics of the University of Amsterdam. His research focuses on non-parametric methods in the financial sector, with particular attention to stochastic covariance modelling and applications in energy finance.

Dr. Simon Trimborn

Program manager

Simon Trimborn is an Assistant Professor of Econometrics and Data Science at the Amsterdam School of Economics of the University of Amsterdam. He obtained his PhD under the supervision of Prof. Wolfgang Karl Härdle at Humboldt University of Berlin. After completing his PhD, he worked for two years as a Research Fellow at the National University of Singapore in the research group of Assoc. Prof. Ying Chen.

Dr. Fernando Santos

Program Manager

Fernando Santos is an Associate Professor at the Informatics Institute of the University of Amsterdam. He is a member of the SIAS group and leads the Prosocial Dynamics Lab.

Dr. Marcel Boersma

Program Manager

Marcel Boersma is an Assistant Professor at the Amsterdam Business School of the University of Amsterdam, specializing in the development of AI-driven methods for financial auditing. In addition to his academic role, he is a Senior Manager at KPMG, where he leads product development within the company’s innovation team.

Saba Amiri

Program Manager

Saba Amiri is a lecturer at the Amsterdam Business School (University of Amsterdam) focused on AI-driven methods for financial auditing. He also serves as a Manager at KPMG, where he leads the AI and machine learning chapter within the firm’s innovation team.