Let’s Talk About is held biannually taking a new topic for each discussion.
To enable a candid discussion and ensure everyone feels free to ask questions and share their thoughts, the sessions will not be recorded and online attendance will not be available.
Open Banking
19 June 2025
The second Let’s Talk About was centred around the theme of Open Banking. We wish to extend our gratitude to our panellists, whose slides have been provided below (where permitted), and to our audience for the lively debate which followed.
Tatiana Sotnikova
Tatiana Sotnikova is a Product Manager at Atto, where she leads the development of Open Banking-based credit scoring solutions and other transaction-based insights used by lenders to enhance decision-making. She previously held senior roles in commercial banks and consulted for the World Bank on credit and risk projects across Europe, Central Asia, and the Caucasus. Tatiana brings a practitioner’s perspective on how alternative data can drive more inclusive and effective credit practices.
Marilena Karanika
Marilena Karanika is the Head of Data Innovation and Head of Categorisation at Experian. With over a decade in the field, Marilena leads a team focused on the development of Categorisation-as-a-Service (CaaS) machine learning engines, supporting various financial institutions in leveraging their data for improved decision-making and customer engagement. Prior to Experian, Marilena held multiple roles at the Royal Bank of Scotland, culminating as a Modelling & Analytics Manager, overseeing significant projects on credit application and behavioural models.
Fengxiang He
Fengxiang He is a Lecturer at School of Informatics, University of Edinburgh. His research is in trustworthy AI; particularly, deep learning theory, reinforcement learning, decentralised learning, algorithmic game theory, and their applications in economics and finance. He is an Area Chair of ICML, NeurIPS, UAI, AISTATS, ECAI, and ACML.
Professor Galina Andreeva – Moderator
Director of Credit Research Centre, Joint Head of Management Science & Business Economics, Personal Chair of Societal Aspects of Credit and Head of MSBE Group.
Synthetic Data
11 December 2024
The series began with a conversation on synthetic data. For those panellists who gave their consent, you can find their presentations below. We wish to thank our audience for the engaging discussion which followed the insightful and thought-provoking presentations by our speakers:
Dr Antonia Gieschen
Antonia Gieschen is a Lecturer in Predictive Analytics at UEBS. Her research focuses on synthetic populations and multi-dataset integration therein to model questions around complex human behaviour, including financial wellbeing and geospatial inequality. Her methodology combines approaches from computational statistics and cluster analysis, synthetic data and dataset merging.
Dr Ben Moews
Ben Moews is a Lecturer in Predictive Analytics at UEBS and works on domain applications of machine learning, computational statistics and high-performance computing. Current research includes collaborations with financial institutions to improve trust and transparency, creating synthetic banking microdata through generative modelling techniques with built-in privacy guarantees.
Dr Gillian Raab
Since retiring as Professor of Applied Statistics at Edinburgh Napier University, Gillian Raab has worked on creating and evaluating synthetic data for disclosure control. She is an author of the popular synthpop package for R that has been shown to out-perform other packages for creating synthetic data.