Banking on Data: Great Possibilities, Great Responsibilities

Sultan Meghji was named Chief Innovation Officer of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) in February 2021. Prior to joining the FDIC, Mr. Meghji co-founded Neocova, a financial technology firm providing secure, cloud-native, artificial intelligence-based software for community banks and credit unions. In addition, he worked on an aid mission to help implement digital banking in Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda, and worked with fintechs and central banks to create peer-to-peer banking solutions for hundreds of thousands of people in underserved areas of Africa and Central Asia.

Mr. Meghji is a nonresident scholar in the Cyber Policy Initiative at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. His research focuses on the architecture of the global financial system, cyber and critical infrastructure security, and the impact of artificial intelligence and quantum computing. He is also an adjunct professor at Washington University’s Olin Business School, and a distinguished member of the Bretton Woods Committee and the Missouri Advisory Committee for the U.S. Global Leadership Coalition. Mr. Meghji has served as an advisor to the U.S. Treasury, the Group of Seven (G7), the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in the areas of cybersecurity, quantum computing, and artificial intelligence.

Sarah Biller is currently the Executive Director of Vantage Ventures. She is the Cofounder of FinTech Sandbox, a Boston-based not for profit working providing entrepreneurs access to high quality data sets, and Capital Market Exchange, a predictive analytics platform for institutional bond investors that aggregated and quantified the impact of nonfinancial factors on credit spreads. Sarah was most recently the Chief Operating Officer for Innovation at State Street Bank’s Global Exchange division and Head of Innovation Ventures. She was named by Innovate Finance as one of the Top 150 global women leaders in FinTech and Lattice80’s list of Top 100 Women in FinTech in the UK and Hong Kong. She sits on the board of multiple start-ups and has also held roles at Fidelity Investments; worked on MCI’s corporate venture team; and launched and led research divisions for Fortune 500 CFO’s and treasurers at the Corporate Executive Board.

Wendy Harrington is Chief Data and Artificial Intelligence Officer and Head of Global Data and Corporate Technology. In this role, she has responsibility for data governance, data platforms, data science and services enabling data, AI, and corporate technology for the enterprise. She also serves as Head of Nuveen Labs, an independent team that provides innovative ways to enhance and grow our business and to give our global investment teams a competitive edge through the application of artificial intelligence, machine learning, analytics and Big Data.

Before joining the firm in 2019, Wendy was CMO at Franklin Templeton where she led a team of over 650 people across 10 countries, supporting the institutional and retail business globally. She served in CMO and COO roles at start-up firms such as Figure Technologies, Inc. and Internet Capital Group. She also worked extensively in financial services as an Associate Principal at McKinsey & Company.

Wendy’s consultative, Fintech and asset management proficiencies coupled with her entrepreneurial expertise building start-ups has influenced her critical strategic thinking, digital prowess, and operational know-how. She is an Associate Editor for the Journal of Investment Management and an advisor to multiple startups.

Wendy earned a B.S. degree in Business Administration with a concentration in Management Information Systems from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and a MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business.

Melissa Koide is the CEO of FinRegLab, a nonprofit research center that tests new technologies and data and facilitates dialogue to inform public policy and drive the financial sector toward a responsible and inclusive financial marketplace. FinRegLab evaluates how technology and data can be safely used to increase financial inclusion and improve financial services for consumers, small businesses, and communities. FinRegLab is currently evaluating the explainability of complex machine learning algorithms in credit underwriting for fairness, model governance, adverse action notices, and inclusion.

Prior to establishing FinRegLab, Melissa served as the U.S. Treasury Department's Deputy Assistant Secretary for Consumer Policy. In that role, Melissa helped to build the first government offered preretirement savings product, the myRA. She also established the $5 million Innovation Fund to support research and strategies to improve consumers’ financial health and their access to safe and affordable financial products and services. Melissa has testified before the Senate Banking and House Financial Services Committees, and she has spoken extensively to policy, industry, and consumer advocacy audiences.

FinRegLab Studies:

• https://finreglab.org/ai-machine-learning/explainability-and-fairness-of-machine-learning-in-credit-underwriting/
• https://finreglab.org/cash-flow-data-in-underwriting-credit-empirical-research-findings