Frankfurt School Receives 2.3 Million Euros in Research Funding

Frankfurt School of Finance & Management today received a commitment for a grant of €2.3 million from the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy. As part of the Financial Big Data Cluster (FBDC), Frankfurt School will contribute with its research by laying the foundation for a secure and legally compliant financial data platform in Europe. Between 2021 and 2023, new AI-based methods will be researched, developed and prototypically analysed at Frankfurt School through various use cases, including sustainable finance, market integrity and anti-money laundering.

"We are very pleased about the funding commitment. We are proud to be part of this project that builds the Financial Big Data Cluster with Frankfurt School's excellent research," said Professor Nils Stieglitz, President of Frankfurt School. "In recent years, we have steadily built our expertise in artificial intelligence, as we expect AI to fundamentally change how companies and organisations finance and govern themselves. With a great tailwind, our researchers can now work on applying artificial intelligence to different areas such as sustainable finance and monetary policy and further develop these research areas at Frankfurt School."

Two sub-projects

The funding for Frankfurt School is divided into two sub-projects, Sustainable Finance and AI-based Monetary Policy. The Sustainable Finance project will be implemented by the UNEP Collaborating Cente for Climate & Sustainable Energy Finance at Frankfurt School, while the AI-based Monetary Policy project will be implemented by the Financial Intermediaries and the Real Economy (FIRE) Center at Frankfurt School.

"The use of artificial intelligence combined with a solid foundation of data helps to better assess the risks and opportunities in the area of sustainable investments. The research funding supports us in creating the analytical basis for financial market actors to consider sustainability risks and impacts in their decisions," said Karsten Löffler, Head of Frankfurt School UNEP Collaboration Centre for Climate & Sustainable Energy Finance.

"The AI-based Monetary Policy project is part of the AI in Finance Initiative of the FIRE Research Centre and offers an excellent opportunity to further anchor the topic of artificial intelligence in financial market research at Frankfurt School," said Professor Sascha Steffen, Professor of Finance at Frankfurt School and Head of the FIRE Centre.

About the Financial Big Data Cluster 

Since 2018, the state of Hesse, together with stakeholders from politics and administration, universities in Hesse and companies in the financial centre of Frankfurt, has been driving the establishment of a financial data cluster – the Financial Big Data Cluster (FBDC). A total of 16 million euros will be invested in the development of the Financial Big Data Cluster - around 10 million euros of which will come from the federal government. The consortium partners include Deloitte, Deutsche Börse Group, Frankfurt School of Finance & Management, Fraunhofer Institute for Material Flow and Logistics, HAWK:AI, Helaba Landesbank Hessen-Thüringen, main incubator, Refinitiv, SAP SE, spotixx and TU Darmstadt. You can find more information here and here (German only).