The Financial Conduct Authority is recruiting members for its new Synthetic Data Expert Group, a sub-group of its recently launched Innovation Advisory Group. The group will work to clarify issues and develop best practice relating to the use of synthetic data in UK financial markets.
The FCA says its motivation to investigate the use of synthetic data and its potential to enable the sharing of data while respecting privacy requirements was one result of its experience running its previous Digital Sandbox pilots and TechSprint programmes. That experience highlighted the difficulties that financial firms faced relating to the access and sharing of data.
That initiative led to a March 2022 call for input from financial firms on the benefits and limitations of synthetic data, followed by the launch of the Synthetic Data Expert Group and a joint industry-academic roundtable in partnership with the Information Commissioner's office and the Alan Turing Institute. The roundtable discussion focused on the challenges of validating synthetic data, which will result in the publication of a paper detailing any findings.
