UKFin+: A Research Agenda for Financial Services

Abstract

This document presents a research agenda for financial services as a deliverable of UKFin+, a Network Plus grant funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council. UKFin+ fosters research collaborations between academic and non-academic partners directed at tackling complex long-term challenges relevant to the UK's financial services sector. Confronting these challenges is crucial to promote the long-term health and international competitiveness of the UK's financial services industry. As one route to impact, UKFin+ includes dedicated funding streams for research collaborations between academic researchers and non-academic organisations. The intended audience of this document includes researchers based in academia, academic funders, as well as practitioners based in industry, regulators, charities or NGOs. It is not intended to be comprehensive or exhaustive in scope but may provide applicants to UKFin+ funding streams and other funding bodies with inspiration for their proposals or at least an understanding of how their proposals align with the broader needs of the UK financial services industry.

Figures (11)

• Figure 1: Overview of Challenges
• Figure 2: Goals for the MaPS UK Strategy for Financial Wellbeing. Source: maps2020
• Figure 3: Overview of financially-specialised large language models (LLMs). Source: nie2024
• Figure 4: How LLMs could enable phishing attacks and financial fraud at scale. Source: Gressel2024
• Figure 5: Overview of the Decentralised Finance Stack. Source: Fabian Schär