Zexun Chen

Two fully funded PhD studentships are available at the University of Edinburgh Business School in collaboration with Lloyds Banking Group , focused on FinTech and AI for financial services . Project 1: Secure & Governed Multi-Agent AI for Home Insurance Claims and Pricing — this project develops a multi-agent decision framework combining agentic AI, privacy-preserving pipelines, and cloud-native architecture to address automation challenges in regulated finance. Project 2: Sequential Foundation Model for Customer Behaviour with Uncertainty-Aware Pricing Decisions — this project pre-trains a foundation model on customer event sequences to unify risk assessment, pricing guidance, and behaviour prediction across tasks. The studentships are 4 years long and are fully funded , covering full UK/overseas tuition plus an annual stipend of £25,000 (increasing by 5% each year). An optional research visit to Lloyds' Technology Centre in Hyderabad, India is also mentioned. Applicants worldwide are welcome, provided they have a strong quantitative background. The ideal profile includes a Master's degree in Finance, Economics, Informatics, Physics, Mathematics, Engineering , or a related quantitative discipline, with UK 65%+ overall or a Distinction-level dissertation (or equivalent). The deadline is 18 June 2026, 23:59 BST . Interested candidates should apply directly via the project links and may contact Zexun Chen by email for informal enquiries about fit.