Identifying and Supporting Financially Vulnerable Consumers in a Privacy-Preserving Manner: A Use Case Using Decentralised Identifiers and Verifiable Credentials

Vulnerable individuals have a limited ability to make reasonable financial decisions and choices and, thus, the level of care that is appropriate to be provided to them by financial institutions may be different from that required for other consumers. Therefore, identifying vulnerability is of central importance for the design and effective provision of financial services and products. However, validating the information that customers share and respecting their privacy are both particularly important in finance and this poses a challenge for identifying and caring for vulnerable populations. This position paper examines the potential of the combination of two emerging technologies, Decentralized Identifiers (DIDs) and Verifiable Credentials (VCs), for the identification of vulnerable consumers in finance in an efficient and privacy-preserving manner.Comment: Published in the ACM CHI 2021 workshop on Designing for New Forms of Vulnerabilit

In private, secure, conversational FinBots we trust

In the past decade, the financial industry has experienced a technology revolution. While we witness a rapid introduction of conversational bots for financial services, there is a lack of understanding of conversational user interfaces (CUI) features in this domain. The finance industry also deals with highly sensitive information and monetary transactions, presenting a challenge for developers and financial providers. Through a study on how to design text-based conversational financial interfaces with N=410 participants, we outline user requirements of trustworthy CUI design for financial bots. We posit that, in the context of Finance, bot privacy and security assurances outweigh conversational capability and postulate implications of these findings. This work acts as a resource on how to design trustworthy FinBots and demonstrates how automated financial advisors can be transformed into trusted everyday devices, capable of supporting users' daily financial activities.Comment: Proceedings of the CHI 2021 Workshop on Let's Talk About CUIs: Putting Conversational User Interface Design into Practice, May 8, 2021 in Yokohama, Japa

Know your customer:balancing innovation and regulation for financial inclusion

Financial inclusion depends on providing adjusted services for citizens with disclosed vulnerabilities. At the same time, the financial industry needs to adhere to a strict regulatory framework, which is often in conflict with the desire for inclusive, adaptive, and privacy-preserving services. In this article we study how this tension impacts the deployment of privacy-sensitive technologies aimed at financial inclusion. We conduct a qualitative study with banking experts to understand their perspectives on service development for financial inclusion. We build and demonstrate a prototype solution based on open source decentralized identifiers and verifiable credentials software and report on feedback from the banking experts on this system. The technology is promising thanks to its selective disclosure of vulnerabilities to the full control of the individual. This supports GDPR requirements, but at the same time, there is a clear tension between introducing these technologies and fulfilling other regulatory requirements, particularly with respect to 'Know Your Customer.' We consider the policy implications stemming from these tensions and provide guidelines for the further design of related technologies.Comment: Published in the Journal Data & Polic

Single-cell multi-omics analysis of the immune response in COVID-19

Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Single-cell multi-omics analysis of the immune response in COVID-19

Funder: Lister Institute of Preventive Medicine; doi: https://doi.org/10.13039/501100001255Funder: University College London, Birkbeck MRC Doctoral Training ProgrammeFunder: The Jikei University School of MedicineFunder: Action Medical Research (GN2779)Funder: NIHR Clinical Lectureship (CL-2017-01-004)Funder: NIHR (ACF-2018-01-004) and the BMA FoundationFunder: Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (grant 2017-174169) and from Wellcome (WT211276/Z/18/Z and Sanger core grant WT206194)Funder: UKRI Innovation/Rutherford Fund Fellowship allocated by the MRC and the UK Regenerative Medicine Platform (MR/5005579/1 to M.Z.N.). M.Z.N. and K.B.M. have been funded by the Rosetrees Trust (M944)Funder: Barbour FoundationFunder: ERC Consolidator and EU MRG-Grammar awardsFunder: Versus Arthritis Cure Challenge Research Grant (21777), and an NIHR Research Professorship (RP-2017-08-ST2-002)Funder: European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL)Abstract: Analysis of human blood immune cells provides insights into the coordinated response to viral infections such as severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2, which causes coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). We performed single-cell transcriptome, surface proteome and T and B lymphocyte antigen receptor analyses of over 780,000 peripheral blood mononuclear cells from a cross-sectional cohort of 130 patients with varying severities of COVID-19. We identified expansion of nonclassical monocytes expressing complement transcripts (CD16+C1QA/B/C+) that sequester platelets and were predicted to replenish the alveolar macrophage pool in COVID-19. Early, uncommitted CD34+ hematopoietic stem/progenitor cells were primed toward megakaryopoiesis, accompanied by expanded megakaryocyte-committed progenitors and increased platelet activation. Clonally expanded CD8+ T cells and an increased ratio of CD8+ effector T cells to effector memory T cells characterized severe disease, while circulating follicular helper T cells accompanied mild disease. We observed a relative loss of IgA2 in symptomatic disease despite an overall expansion of plasmablasts and plasma cells. Our study highlights the coordinated immune response that contributes to COVID-19 pathogenesis and reveals discrete cellular components that can be targeted for therapy

Earthquake risk reduction behaviours in organisations: Understanding what organisations are doing to stay safe in New Zealand's seismically active environment

Creating a resilient New Zealand requires effort from all of society. Organisations, in particular, have the potential to be a catalyst in building a resilient nation. Organisations that effectively manage natural hazard risk provide safety for their employees, minimise economic losses through downtime, and are able to support community recovery by providing key services, employment, and economic stimulus. Organisations have a number of regulatory obligations to protect their employees and other stakeholders, such as those in the Health and Safety at Work Act 2015 (HSWA). The HSWA has a core purpose to “protect workers and other persons against harm to their health, safety, and welfare by eliminating or minimising risks arising from work….”. On the surface, the legislation is well placed to promote seismic risk reduction activities, however we currently have little understanding of how organisations interpret and act on obligations within the HSWA to reduce seismic risk. Similarly, it is unclear how the HSWA would be enforced in relation to seismic hazards. In this EQC-funded project, we will investigate the application of HWSA to seismic risk. We will seek to understand the legislative and policy environment and compare this with organisations’ a) understanding of likely earthquake impacts, b) steps taken to reduce risk, and c) enablers and barriers to action by organisations. The research will help policy-makers and regulators understand how organisations are managing seismic risk and how existing legislative tools, such as HSWA, can be better leveraged to promote disaster risk reduction