This month the EU-Supervisory Digital Finance Academy (EU-SDFA) has started its activities. More information is found on their website eusdfa.eui.eu, with a factsheet and a curriculum.

The purpose of the academy:

The EU Supervisory Digital Finance Academy (EU-SDFA) is a TSI flagship initiative aimed at supporting financial supervisory authorities in coping with the risks and opportunities associated to the use of advanced technologies in the financial sector. The Commission has established the Academy in cooperation with the three European Supervisory Authorities (EBA – ESMA – EIOPA) and the Florence School of Banking of the European University Institute (FBF-EUI). The EU-SDFA encompasses comprehensive training cycles and workshops enabling the acquisition of new expertise and skills, knowledge sharing and peer-to-peer exchanges within the financial supervisory community.

This new institute will play a role in the supervision of the financial sector and in the supervision of companies carrying out public tasks in the fight against money laundering. In the curriculum attention is paid to digital supervision, including RegTech and SupTech solutions. the ‘Learning Outcomes’ includes amongst others:

• Be able to analyse and evaluate the challenges behind the transition to open finance
• Learn to identify and understand the implications of the key use cases for tokenisation and crypto-assets and regulatory approach in the EU
• Be able to analyse and evaluate the impact of AI and robo-advice in digital financial services
• Gain insights into the implementation of Big Data and advanced data analytics in finance
• Apply theoretical knowledge to practical scenarios in supervision
• Understand the risks and opportunities to leverage technology and data to support the fight against money laundering and terrorist financing (ML/FT)
• Build ICT skillset across the EU supervisory community

The new European anti-crime supervisor, Authority for Countering Money Laundering and Financing of Terrorism (AMLA), is not yet mentioned. It is to be expected AMLA will join, even though it will also have a function in the non-financial sector.

It remains to be seen whether humans and their limitations will be taken into account by the digital supervisors being bred in this institute.