UCDx invited to join CFIT consortium

Today, the 11 June, the Centre for Finance, Innovation and Technology  announced that its second industry-led coalition is to focus on ‘fighting economic crime through enhanced verification’.  CFIT has invited UCDx to join this second coalition – which aims to provide interim findings in Q4 2024,  and a final report in early 2025.

CFIT was funded in 2023 by the Treasury in response to the 2021 Kalifa review of UK Fintech. It plays a convening role, and invites stakeholders – both large and  small – to work together to address common problems.

In its first coalition, CFIT focused on Open Finance, and ‘demonstrated the potential of data-sharing technology to deliver better outcomes for UK consumers and faster, more effective, access to finance for SMEs’. The coalition’s proofs of concept are now being trialed with Citizens Advice and a group of retail banks.

Whether the second coalition will like the UCD proposal is uncertain. User control can be seen as basic building block of a trusted, secure and privacy enhancing internet. As such it extends beyond the normal bounds of traditional Fintech: we propose to use applications in a different sector – education – to equip individuals with digital wallets, which can then be used across and within other sectors. The benefits, in the financial sector, include making the KYC process easier for individuals, and cheaper for banks; and  in enabling individuals to be sure of the identity of the organizations (and other people) they interact with, before there is any question of payment, and so reducing  the opportunities for APP fraud to be set up.

The question for CFIT may be this: will it dare  recommend actions of the kind required by UCD, economy wide, or will it instead restrict its remit to traditional Fintech ? Since the entire economy runs on money,  perhaps the wider scope  will be accepted. We shall see.