Kennedys becomes first law firm to join prestigious US fintech research group

CRAFT is the first fintech-focused Industry University Cooperative Research Center and brings together academic and industry partners, as well as representatives from all levels of government. It supports advanced research projects relating to the fintech challenges of the financial services industry and is funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF).

As finance continues its rapid transformation into the digital era, CRAFT, led by Steve Yang and George Calhoun at the School of Business at Stevens Institute of Technology and Apama Gupta at the Lally School of Management at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, underscores the nation’s strategic investment in managing risks and unintended consequences of the emerging – and yet unknown – challenges facing the high-tech financial services industry.

CRAFT plans to expand its reach to include the insurance market, which is where Kennedys’ experience in developing technology solutions through Kennedys IQ will be advantageous.

Kennedys joins other industry partners including Bank of America, Capgemini, Goldman Sachs, Charles Schwab, CHUBB, IBM and Wells Fargo, and university partners Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and Stevens Institute of Technology, all collaborating to bring technology solutions to advance the financial services industry.

The firm has been invited to speak at CRAFT’s bi-annual Industry Advisory Board Meeting being held November 2-3 in New York. The meeting will feature keynote addresses by the United Nations, UKFin+, and Imperial College as well as a panel discussion on Fintech Innovation and Commercialization. Karim Derrick, Chief Products Officer at Kennedys IQ is presenting along with Jian-bo Yang, Chair in Decision and System Sciences at the Alliance Manchester Business School and Director of the Decision and Cognitive Sciences Research Centre at Manchester University.

Kennedys has a long-standing partnership with the university, having previously teamed up to develop fraud prevention software. The university is also a partner in a consortium led by Kennedys which is developing groundbreaking software able to identify and assess reputational / ESG (environmental, social and governance) risk, following a grant from Innovate UK.

At every CRAFT meeting, members vote on funding a range of multidisciplinary projects that will bring new solutions for the advancement of financial services. Kennedys will now have voting rights and plans to play a significant role in bringing solutions to market.

Dr Steve Yang, Director of CRAFT, says: “The financial services industry is presently undergoing considerable change due to the development of new technologically focused products and services. The understanding of these innovations requires a multidisciplinary approach bringing together the perspectives of industry, societal and government policies, which is where CRAFT comes in.