Single applicant · UK-resident PAYE only · no subcontractors

A book-author founder of UK fintech and RegTech.

Vladislav (Slava) Solodkiy — Principal Investigator

London-based fintech and RegTech founder; fifteen-year operational and research record at the intersection of compliance, digital identity and frontier AI. Holder of the United Kingdom Global Talent Visa endorsed by Tech Nation; France Passport Talent; United States O-1.

Founded Life.SREDA VC ($140m AUM; nine exits including Simple → BBVA in 2014 and Fidor → Groupe BPCE in 2016; Institutional Investor Fintech Finance 40 2016 and 2018). Founded and led ArivalBank as Chief Executive — US-licensed digital bank, Puerto Rico International Financial Entity 065 (2021); Finovate Best of Show 2018; Tearsheet Best SMB Digital Banking award. Founded Nansen.ID, a live digital-identity product for sanctioned and stateless populations.

"From dissident to detective: the same instinct that published a 2012 anti-corruption card for the Navalny foundation now publishes the inference-controller code that will make audit-traceable LLMs procurement-grade for UK regulators."Project framing memo · April 2026

Selected published works

Indexed-researcher footprint

IdentifierValue
ORCID0009-0003-8363-4251
Scopus author59594654100
Web of ScienceOJS-9079-2025
TrademarkTECHNODELIC™ (USPTO Serial 99314832)

Teaching and mentorship

Guest lecturer at Wharton, INSEAD and University College London. Volunteer mentor with Tech Nation, NatWest DigitalBoost and EnterpriseNation Help to Grow.

Hires (UK PAYE, recruited Month 1)

Research Engineer · 1.0 FTE

MEng/PhD in NLP or applied ML; documented LoRA / QLoRA fine-tuning experience; benchmark-construction practice; UK working rights. Pipeline conversations open with two London-based candidates; recruitment-agency fall-back budgeted.

Compliance SME · 0.4 FTE

ICA-qualified MLRO with operational experience at a UK tier-2 challenger bank or FCA-supervised firm. Leads WP4 query design and gold-label annotation; co-authors WP5 white paper compliance-domain sections.

Unfunded UK-based advisers (voluntary, no Innovate UK funding flow)

Adviser A — Polina Vertex, Research Affiliate / Senior Researcher at the Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance, Cambridge Judge Business School (since July 2022). Quantitative developer / data scientist with two Master's degrees and a documented research record in fintech, blockchain data analysis, machine learning and RegTech. Prior roles include Senior Consultant at Arival Bank (2018–2019) and Product Consultant at A.ID Identity & Compliance, London — providing direct domain continuity with this project. London-based; UK working rights. Provides peer review of the inference-controller architecture, statistical methodology of the Compliance Refusal Index and Cambridge institutional anchoring. Voluntary advisory only; no Innovate UK funding flow.

Adviser B — Head of Compliance / MLRO at a UK tier-2 challenger bank (to be named). Provides operational realism on EDD workflow integration, query design from real-world casework patterns and Phase 2 demonstrator-partner introductions. Voluntary advisory only; no Innovate UK funding flow.