FINOS Releases First Draft of AI Governance Framework for Financial Institutions at OSFF NY with a Groundswell of Support from Industry Leaders

New FINOS Platinum Members include NVIDIA and Protect AI with Moody's joining as a Gold Member, alongside key financial services and AI industry leaders.

NEW YORK, NY / ACCESSWIRE / October 1, 2024 / The Fintech Open Source Foundation (FINOS), the financial services umbrella of the Linux Foundation, proudly announced multiple Artificial Intelligence (AI) milestones at this week's Open Source in Finance Forum New York (OSFF NY). These developments include the draft release of a groundbreaking AI Governance Framework for financial institutions from the FINOS AI Readiness Special Interest Group (SIG) and an invitation to the broader community to participate in this now fully open initiative.

Additionally, the broader FINOS AI initiative has been embraced by an impressive list of financial services and technology organizations and is attracting new members who are leaders in AI, including NVIDIA, Protect AI, and Moody's.

"It's exciting to see how the FINOS membership has come together in a relatively short period of time to work on these important foundational guidelines for deploying AI in the complex and regulated financial services world," said FINOS Executive Director Gabrielle Columbro. "As the world awakens to the fundamental role open source AI will play in the economy, social improvement and responsible innovation, we welcome the addition of new landmark names and increased commitment of our existing members as we shepherd the industry beyond AI readiness and into building collaborative open source AI for such a critical infrastructure like financial services."

"NVIDIA software is enabling rapid development of accelerated computing and AI in financial services, helping bring new data capabilities to firms," said Jochen Papenbrock, Head of Financial Technology EMEA, NVIDIA. "NVIDIA is enhancing its community engagement by joining the FINOS project, bolstering a long-standing commitment to contributing to open source AI and data processing."

New FINOS Platinum Member NVIDIA provides AI software like NVIDIA Guardrails, NeMo and RAPIDS to support the adoption of faster, more efficient computing models in financial services. NVIDIA software also enhances climate risk applications, helps conserve energy and supports environmental and climate risk initiatives, including through the NVIDIA Earth-2 platform, carbon capture, and environmental, social and governance risk analysis.

AI Governance Framework for Financial Services released

The power of generative AI, which can enable users to better leverage proprietary and public data and information in use cases that touch everything from trading to preventing financial crime to regulatory reporting to improving customer experiences, will be transformative. Since FINOS launched its broader AI initiative earlier this year, it was clear that accelerating AI readiness was a critical first step. AI presents new challenges for onboarding technology in financial services that must be addressed to allow for its rapid, safe and trustworthy adoption - building the right guardrails and considering the needs of the customer, the organization and the regulatory environment.

Following months of members-only collaboration, the AI Readiness SIG launched its AI Governance Framework draft today at OSFF NY. The Framework is vendor-agnostic and outlines 15 risks and 15 controls specifically tailored for AI systems leveraging LLM paradigms in FS. It is designed to be a 'living document' that addresses current and new threats and builds upon existing risk frameworks.

Madhu Coimbatore, Head of AI Development Platforms at Morgan Stanley noted - "While we have deployed AI solutions for many years, Generative AI is poised to disrupt how we do business, creating new opportunities but also introducing challenges and risks. It's important that Regulated Financial Services companies apply rigor and discipline to ensure safe and trustworthy deployment of this technology. As a founding member, we are thrilled to see the progress we have already made with our partners in the FINOS AI Readiness SIG over the last few months. This is a great starting point for us, as an industry, to collaborate on a structured approach to the adoption and governance of AI similar to what we did through the Open Source Readiness program a few years back."

An invitation to the financial services community to AI Readiness Roadmap

As a critical next step in finalizing the AI Governance Framework and adopting responsible AI practices, FINOS is inviting the wider financial services community to participate in this important collaboration. The task is to develop and operationalize frameworks, policies and tools for the effective, safe, trustworthy and compliant deployment of generative AI technologies. It is critical the framework reflects the diverse needs of the industry and sets the right guardrails for onboarding and operationalizing AI in financial services.

As the group becomes fully open source, firms, academics and practitioners are now able to join community working groups, contribute to the framework's development and provide feedback to refine and expand the Financial Services AI Readiness reference model through a comprehensive roadmap that seeks to anticipate responsible AI considerations, further use cases and regulatory imperatives.

Existing FINOS members should reach out here to learn more and other interested non-member stakeholders can learn more on how to become a FINOS member here.

Already the interest and response from FINOS members and the broader community for an open source approach to navigating AI is widespread. FINOS members including Morgan Stanley, GitHub, Microsoft, Scott Logic, ControlPlane, Databricks, Provectus and Red Hat have played a vital role in applying an open source methodology addressing both the AI readiness question as well as the broader AI strategic initiative roadmap.

"We are frequently asked for insights on AI in the financial sector. As a consortium of financial institutions, FINOS offers a consolidated industry perspective on the risks and control measures pertinent to adopting generative AI. We look forward to ongoing engagement and continued development of the Governance Framework to ensure the responsible implementation of AI solutions." - Jared Lambert, Microsoft Group Product Manager.

The broader financial services and technology community is also eager to participate in this open source approach. The FINOS community is thrilled to welcome NVIDIA and Protect AI as Platinum Members, as well as Moody's as a Gold Member.

"At Protect AI we are on a mission to create a safer AI-powered world, and have been deeply involved in setting standards and best practices to deploy AI safely across industries." Said Daryan Dehghanphisheh, President and co-founder at Protect AI. "We are excited to join FINOS and serve as a leading voice in this critical step of finalizing the AI Governance Framework, and look forward to collaborating with the community working groups, and contributing to the framework's development to ensure AI readiness within the financial services industry."

"Our membership of the Linux Foundation and FINOS marks an important milestone in Moody's ongoing technology and innovation journey as we embrace the transformative powers of GenAI and open source. We are thrilled to work with FINOS and fellow community members to collaborate and build open source use cases which will benefit the financial industry." - Sergio Gago Huerta, MD - AI and Quantum Computing, Moody's 

An industry now ready to leverage the power of open source AI

With its groundbreaking work in open source readiness (OSR) for financial services over the past eight years, FINOS has set the frame for financial services organizations and their technology partners to work collaboratively on a range of open source initiatives - from AI to interoperability to climate - each with the power to have lasting impacts in coming years.

These themes and others are the cornerstones of the agenda of both OSFF NY and its sister event in the UK (held in June) which are now the leading forums for financial services executives and technologists to come together to learn from and engage with their industry colleagues. FINOS looks forward to sharing the transformative work this open source community will deliver in all these areas in the coming months.

Some of the world's leading technology companies and innovators advocate open source as a safe and cost-effective way for resource-constrained businesses and developers to access state-of-the-art AI. FINOS, through its diverse membership, is ideally centered in the financial services ecosystem to foster a similar open source approach to AI that is mindful of the industry's specific and complex needs.

Media Contact:

Olivia McCormick
Stanton Communications, Inc
omccormick@stantoncomm.com
+1 (215) 287-6337
Patrick Doherty

FINOS
patrick.doherty@finos.org
+1 (206) 245 8574

SOURCE: FINOS