The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) released an open-source toolkit to enable the responsible use of artificial intelligence (AI) in the financial industry.
The Veritas Toolkit version 2.01, developed by an MAS-led consortium of 31 industry players, will help financial institutions (FI) carry out the assessment methodologies for the Fairness, Ethics, Accountability and Transparency (FEAT) principles. The FEAT principles provide guidance to firms offering financial products and services on the responsible use of AI and data analytics.
The Veritas Toolkit is the first responsible AI toolkit developed specifically for the financial industry. Veritas Toolkit version 1.0, which was released in February 20223, focused on the assessment methodology for fairness. Veritas Toolkit version 2.0 has an improved Fairness assessment methodology and includes assessment methodologies for ethics, accountability, and transparency. Accenture and Bank of China are the main developers of the toolkit while BNY Mellon, DBS, OCBC and UOB contributed to the pilot testing of this toolkit.
The consortium also published a white paper detailing the key lessons learnt by seven FI namely BNY Mellon, DBS, HSBC, OCBC, Singapore Life Ltd. (Singlife), Standard Chartered Bank and UOB, which piloted the integration of Veritas methodology with their internal governance framework. These include the importance of having:
The MAS-led industry consortium also developed additional use cases to illustrate the application of the Veritas methodology:
In the coming years, the consortium will focus on training in responsible AI and facilitate more FIs’ adoption of the Veritas Methodologies and Toolkit. MAS has also worked with some AI solution providers, such as IBM and SAS, to integrate the Veritas Toolkit with their AI solutions so that they can better serve their financial sector customers. The consortium will work closely with these industry players to build the Veritas open-source developer community and train more responsible AI talents.
Sopnendu Mohanty, chief fintech officer, MAS, said: “Given the rapid pace of developments in AI, it is critical that financial institutions have in place robust frameworks for the responsible use of AI. The Veritas Toolkit version 2.0 will enable financial institutions and fintech firms to effectively assess their AI use cases for fairness, ethics, accountability, and transparency. This will help promote a responsible AI ecosystem.”
Re-disseminated by The Asian Banker