Open Finance Conference 2025

August 28, 2025

Western New England University • Springfield, Massachusetts, USA •

Join Industry Leaders at the Premier Open Finance Event!

The Open Finance Conference (OFC’25) is the premier industry conference on open finance. Participants will explore how open standards and open-source technologies are being used by the industry leaders in the finance services sector. From future-proofed infrastructure applications, secure financial transactions at lower costs, to policies and regulations that support industry innovations.

Since the dawn of the computing age, open technologies, that are based open-source and open standards, have played a pivotal role in the growth and adoption of information and computing technologies by consumers, small & medium-sized businesses, and larger private and public-sector enterprises. Open technologies foster the adoption of industry best practices, help guarantee interoperability, allow for customizations and value-add, and by for example lowering entry barriers and mitigating against vendor lock-in open technologies provide platforms where innovations are born, shared, and grow.

From open LLMs for AI such as DeepSeek and Llama, open-source operating systems like Linux and FreeBSD, open-source databases like PostgreSQL and MySQL, to open-source programming languages like C, Rust, and Python the infrastructure for organizations to innovate around open technologies is widely and globally available.

The financial services sector is one of the heaviest users of technology to do things like facilitate rapid transactions, allow for secure transactions by customers using different devices, securely store customers’ data, and communicate with customers. Recently new open technologies, such as open AI agents, blockchains, open wallets, Open APIs and open banking have been introduced, and they will likely have a transformational impact on the technology landscape of financial institutions. As such it is important that every financial services professional becomes well acquainted with these new open technologies.

This conference will bring together industry professionals to share experiences and best practices on the use of open technologies in the industry and to discuss roadmaps for the structured and secure adoption of open technologies. Hosted alongside the OFC’25 at the same venue in Springfield, MA is the 2025 International Conference on Open Finance (ICOF 2025). At ICOF 2025 academic researchers will present the latest findings on open technologies and their potential application to the financial services sector. All participants will be able to access any sessions in OFC’25 and ICOF 2025. Industry professionals will be able to interact with academic researchers in a relaxed and collegial setting in break-out sessions or over meals.

Program

Start	Finish	Activity	Location	Presenter
8:30am	9:15am	Breakfast & Networking	DCC Conference
9:15am	9:30am	Opening Remarks	DCC Conference	Raymond McCarthy - Vice President of Finance & CFO at Western New England University
9:30am	10:00am	Keynote Speech	DCC Conference	Sears Merritt - Head of Enterprise Technology & Experience at MassMutual
10:00am	10:30am	Panel Discussion - Financial Services in the Age of AI	DCC Conference	Sharianne Walker - Dean, College of Business at Western New England University (Moderator)
				Sears Merritt - Head of Enterprise Technology & Experience at MassMutual
				Sarah Biller - Co-Founder of FinTech Sandbox, CMX, & Vantage Ventures
				Matthew Garrity - President & CEO of Florence Bank
10:30am	10:50am	Responsible AI: Policy-Ready, Open, and Cross-Industry Aligned	DCC Conference	Pavithra Iyengar - Global Data Privacy Manager at PubMatic
10:50am	11:10am	An Alternative AI Architecture to Enable Adoption in Mission Critical Use Cases	DCC Conference	Joy Dasgupta, CEO of Gyan AI
11:10am	11:40am	Panel Discussion: AI Applications, Compliance, & Ethics	DCC Conference	Naren Chandra - University of The Cumberlands and ex-Wayfair & CVS (Moderator)
				Zheqian (Tony) Tong - Portfolio Manager & VP at BlackRock
				Pavithra Iyengar - Global Data Privacy Manager at PubMatic
				Rachit Jain - Duck Creek & Guidewire Senior Consultant at EY
				Misam Abbas - Staff AI Engineer at LinkedIn
				Joy Dasgupta, CEO of Gyan AI
11:40am	11:50am	Tea Break	DCC Conference
11:50am	12:10pm	Building Trust Through Explainable and Auditable AI	DCC Conference	Misam Abbas - Staff AI Engineer at LinkedIn
12:10pm	12:30pm	Applications of AI in Auditing/Compliance and AI Audits	DCC Conference	Saji Nair - Co-Founder & CEO of BCube Analytics
12:30pm	1:00pm	Keynote Speech	DCC Conference	Sarah Biller - Co-Founder of FinTech Sandbox, CMX, & Vantage Ventures
1:00pm	2:00pm	Lunch & Networking	UC 225
		Academic Track Session 1: Risk Detection and Volatility Analysis in Financial Markets
		This session focuses on methodologies for identifying and managing risks, regime shifts, and anomalies in volatile financial environments, including market crises, regulatory challenges, and fraud.
2:10pm	2:35pm	Safe and Swift: A Game-Theoretic Framework for Rapid Detection of Volatility Regime Shifts in Financial Markets	DCC Conference	Tingting Zhao (University of Rhode Island); Patrick Flaherty (University of Massachusetts Amherst); Guangyu Zhu (University of Rhode Island)
2:35pm	3:00pm	Predictive Analytics for Regulatory Risk in Open Finance: A Data-Driven Framework	DCC Conference	Madhu Thota (Western New England University); Tuncay Bayrak (Western New England University)
3:00pm	3:10pm	Tea Break	DCC Conference
3:10pm	3:35pm	Detecting Fraud, Waste, and Abuse in Healthcare Claims using AI: Applying Isolation Forest to Claim Analytics	DCC Conference	Naren Chandra (University of The Cumberlands and ex-Wayfair & CVS); Vineel Arekapudi (Blue Cross Blue Shield)
3:35pm	4:00pm	Calendar Anomalies in Crisis: Intra-Day Volatility Patterns During the GFC and COVID-19	DCC Conference	Naresh Chethala (Western New England University); Syeda Nabeera Suhail (Western New England University)
		Academic Track Session 2: AI-Driven Sentiment and Analytical Tools in Finance
		This session explores advanced AI models and platforms for sentiment extraction, data augmentation, crypto analysis, and supporting tools like transcription for financial insights.
2:10pm	2:35pm	Comparative Analysis of Lexicon-Based and Transformer-Based Sentiment Models on SEC 10-K Filings	WCC1	Naresh Chethala (Western New England University)
2:35pm	3:00pm	Enhancing Financial Market Sentiment Analysis Using Dataset Augmentation	WCC1	Dante Contella (Pennsylvania State University); Johnson Kinyua (Pennsylvania State University); Charles Mutigwe (Western New England University)
3:00pm	3:10pm	Tea Break	DCC Conference
3:10pm	3:35pm	AICrypto Assistant: A Multi Agent LLM Platform for Democratizing Crypto Asset Analysis	WCC1	Mimoza Dimodugno (Northeastern University); Mehdi Mammadov (Northeastern University)
3:35pm	4:00pm	WhisperX Multi-Speaker Transcription System	WCC1	Mimoza Dimodugno (Northeastern University); V S N Sai Krishna Mohan Kocherlakota (Northeastern University); Mehdi Mammadov (Northeastern University)
		WNE FinTech Incubator: Startups Exhibition
		Startups from the WNE FinTech Incubator will be showcasing their products with posters and live demos by company representatives.
9:00am	1:00pm	Startup Poster Presentations & Live Product Demos	DCC Conference Foyer	Startup Representatives
2:10pm	4:00pm	Startup Poster Presentations	DCC Conference Foyer


Western New England University - Conference Facilities
DCC Conference		Delbridge Career Center - Conference Hall
UC 225		University Commons Dining Room 225
WCC1		Welcome Center Conference Room 1 (2nd Floor)

Open Finance Conference 2025

August 28, 2025

Keynote Speakers