National accolade for Southampton Business School collaboration

Links between Southampton Business School and a leading financial company have been praised as ‘outstanding’ by Innovate UK, the UK’s government-run innovation agency.

The successful Knowledge Transfer Partnership (KTP) led by Professor Ming-Chien Sung was a three-year project to aid decision-making at Star Financial Systems Ltd. Ming-Chien, alongside Centre for Risk Research colleagues Professor Johnnie Johnson and Dr Tiejun Ma and Associate Peter Fraser-Mackenzie worked with the company to develop a state-of-the-art graphical dashboard to enable staff to use data from their clients to analyse and understand their trading behaviour.

Innovate UK judged the partnership as outstanding because of its achievements in 'strengthening the competitiveness, wealth creation and economic performance of the UK by the enhancement of knowledge and skills in the stimulation of innovation’. It has added it to its shortlist of projects to be developed as significant KTP case studies.

Ming Chien says: “We are delighted to have won this tremendous accolade from Innovate UK. Very few projects are judged as outstanding and it is very rewarding to know that our work has already achieved a tremendous amount for Star Financial Systems. They have now set up a spin-out company Analytic AI to further develop the insights gained through the project and this project has served to develop a strong strategic partnership between Southampton Business School and Star Financial.”

Star Financial Systems Chairman Kevin Taylor adds: “The KTP, under the leadership of Professor Sung, has helped transform our business culture, equipping us with the data analysis and data processing capabilities to flourish in a turbulent environment. It has given us important insights into how to grasp the commercial opportunities afforded by our data and demonstrates the benefits which can result from collaboration between industry and academic-based institutions.”