Digital Finance - Reaching New Frontiers

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A competitive European financial sector is vital for the modernisation of the European economy across sectors and to turn Europe into a global digital player. We have identified the five most pertinent areas within this domain: Towards a European financial data space; Artificial intelligence for financial markets; Towards explainable and fair AI-generated decisions; Driving digital innovations with Blockchain applications; Sustainability of Digital Finance. For this purpose, we have gathered an internationally recognized network consisting of nine leading European Universities (WU Vienna, University of Twente, Bucharest University of Economic Studies, Babes-Bolyai University, Bern Business School, Kaunas University of Technology, University of Naples, University of Poznan, University of Kaiserslautern-Landau), all ranked among the top 200 universities globally in their fields, three major international corporations (Swedbank, Deutsche Bank and Raiffeisen Bank) with a significant R&D presence across Europe, two SMEs (Cardo AI and Royalton Partners) being some of the most innovative ones in their field, three large and internationally renowned research centres (ARC Greece, EIT Digital and Fraunhofer Institute Germany), the Bank for International Settlements and the European Central Bank, as one of the seven principal decision-making bodies of the European Union and the Euratom as well as one of the world's most important central banks. The results of the research carried out within DIGITAL are of substantial interest to three leading European-wide research networks that our members either lead or serve on the management committee for: COST Action CA19130 (240 researchers across 39 European countries), ECMI and the European Consortium of Innovative Universities (13 European Universities). It is only through a network that incorporates the expertise of all distinct shapers of the financial industry, that we can see a comprehensive shift towards innovation and digitalization of a sector that is notoriously averse to change.