Frank McGroarty

Frank McGroarty is a former fund manager who is now Professor of Computational Finance and Investment Analytics at the University of Southampton. He is the founder and Director of the Centre for Digital Finance which conducts research into the next generation of financial products, collaborating with academics from various disciplines and which hosts the annual Cryptocurrency Research Conference.

Frank has published more than 50 research papers in leading academic journals in finance and computer science, and has won multiple awards for his research. To date, his research has attracted around £4m in funding (17 research grants). His academic research builds on his investment analyst and fund manager background (UBS, Barclays, State Street), in which he utilised quantitative techniques for investment strategies to manage international investment portfolios. As an investment practitioner, he served on committees and working groups of the Institute of Quantitative Investment Research, the Global Association of Risk Professionals and the Fund Managers’ Association (Investment Association).

He has managed a number of academic research projects which were funded by industry partners and which produced decision support tools for fund managers and investment analysts. He mentors University of Southampton students who set up Silver Stag Investment Management, a student-run investment management venture. He supervises several PhD students and has previously supervised 10 to successful completion, who have gone on to develop careers in academia and in the investment industry.

He is a founding Director of the European Capital Markets CRC which is a collaboration between 8 European universities and 2 Australian institutions, aimed at promoting and facilitating research cooperation between member universities and industry in European capital markets. He chairs the Insurance Committee of the AI4people initiative of Atomium: European Institute for Science, Media and Democracy, which is tasked with writing a white paper on the social impact of the application of Artificial Intelligence systems within the insurance industry for the European Parliament. He is also a member of the AI4people Banking and Finance committee who have a similar brief for banking and financial services.

In recent years, Frank has worked with member of the Transparency Task Force on the issue of interoperability between platforms used by providers of pensions and personal insurance services. The lack of interoperability between these platforms stifles competition and masks costly, inefficient working practices.

He holds a PhD in finance from the University of Southampton, as well as BA and MA degrees in economics from University College Dublin.