Schemes and Initiatives
Veritas Initiative
What It Is
Veritas aims to enable financial institutions to evaluate their AIDA-driven solutions against the principles of fairness, ethics, accountability and transparency (FEAT) that MAS co-created with the financial industry in late 2018 to strengthen internal governance around the application of AI and the management and use of data.
The Veritas is part of Singapore National AI Strategy. It was highlighted by Mr Heng Swee Keat, Deputy Prime Minister of Singapore, in his speech at the Singapore FinTech Festival and Singapore Week of Innovation and TeCHnology (SFF x SWITCH) 2019 and 2020.
Veritas is a multi-phased collaborative project with financial industry. The project is in its second phase.
Project Phases
Phase 1
MAS first announced on 13 November 2019 that it had partnered the financial industry to create a framework for responsible use of AI. MAS later announced on 28 May 2020 the scope of Veritas Phase 1 and the consortium members.
The Phase 1 consortium includes the following organisations:
- Amazon Web Services
- AXA
- Bank of China
- BAFT (Bankers Association for Finance & Trade)
- BNP Paribas
- BNY Mellon
- CFA Society Singapore
- Citi Singapore
- DBS Bank
- Element AI
- EY
- IAG Firemark Labs & Gradient Institute
- Goldman Sachs
- HSBC
- Industrial and Commercial Bank of China Limited
- Microsoft
- Monetary Authority of Singapore
- MUFG Bank, Ltd
- Ping An of China
- Prudential Assurance Company Singapore
- SGInnovate
- Standard Chartered Bank
- Swiss Re
- Unionbank of the Philippines
- United Overseas Bank Limited
Two core teams within the Veritas consortium were formed to develop the fairness metrics and assessment methodology for two banking use cases:
- UOB and Element AI focused on credit risk scoring
- HSBC, IAG Firemark Labs and Gradient Institute focused on customer marketing
Phase 1 successfully concluded on 06 January 2021 and produced two white papers:
- Veritas Document 1 FEAT Fairness Principles Assessment Methodology (6.06 MB)
- Veritas Document 2 FEAT Fairness Principles Assessment Case Studies (5.71 MB)
Open source code for two use cases was also published on GitHub.
Phase 2
MAS announced on 06 January 2021 that the Veritas consortium will work on Phase 2 this year. Phase 2 will focus on the following four use cases:
- Credit risk scoring (banking)
- Customer marketing (banking)
- Predictive underwriting (insurance)
- Fraud detection (insurance)
The Phase 2 consortium includes the following organisations:
- Accenture
- Amazon Web Services
- AXA
- Bank of China
- Bank of Singapore
- BAFT (Bankers Association for Finance & Trade)
- BNP Paribas
- BNY Mellon
- CFA Society Singapore
- Citi Singapore
- DBS Bank
- Google Cloud
- Goldman Sachs
- HSBC
- IBM
- Industrial and Commercial Bank of China Limited
- Microsoft
- Monetary Authority of Singapore
- MUFG Bank, Ltd
- OCBC Bank
- Ping An of China
- Prudential Assurance Company Singapore
- Standard Chartered Bank
- Swiss Re
- Truera
- Unionbank of the Philippines
- United Overseas Bank Limited
Three core teams within the Veritas consortium were formed to develop the assessment methodology for their focusing area:
- Swiss Re and Accenture will focus on developing the fairness assessment methodology for insurance predictive underwriting
- UOB, AXA and Accenture will focus on developing the ethics and accountability assessment methodology for customer marketing and insurance fraud detection
- SCB, HSBC and Truera will focus on developing Transparency assessment methodology for credit risk scoring and customer marketing
Two white papers will be published after the completion of Veritas phase 2. The first will document the assessment methodology for the FEAT principles and the other will document the selected use cases.