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Hanwha Life, Stanford unveil AI-powered market signal detector

Published: 19 Nov. 2025, 15:49 Updated: 19 Nov. 2025, 17:45

KIM MIN-YOUNG
[email protected]

A representative of Hanwha Life’s AI research center presents on research at Icaif 2025, held from Nov. 15 to 18. [HANWHA LIFE]

Hanwha Life and Stanford University unveiled a new AI-powered approach to statistical arbitrage at one of the world’s top finance and AI conferences.

The insurance company said Wednesday that it presented a research paper co-authored with Stanford University’s Human-Centered AI at this year’s International Conference on AI in Finance (Icaif), held in Singapore from Saturday to Tuesday.

Icaif, organized by the Association for Computing Machinery, is considered one of the world’s top academic conferences in AI for finance, according to Hanwha Life. The event brings together global financial institutions such as JPMorgan, Morgan Stanley and BlackRock, as well as scholars from around the world.

This year’s Icaif received 349 paper submissions, of which 113, an acceptance rate of 32.4 percent, passed the peer review process. Hanwha Life’s paper was ranked in the top 15.5 percent and selected for oral presentation.

The paper, titled “Attention Factors for Statistical Arbitrage,” explores the application of the attention mechanism — a key technique used in cutting-edge generative AI — to factor models in finance. The attention method identifies significant signals from large datasets, while factor models are frameworks used to explain common influences on stock price movements.

“This research is significant in that it shows AI can detect subtle signals overlooked by traditional financial models, uncovering new investment opportunities,” a Hanwha Life representative said. “We aim to further expand the role of our AI research center through applied research that delivers real-world investment outcomes.”

The conference’s reviewers praised the study as “a foundational achievement that lays the groundwork for future research in financial AI.”

The joint research was conducted by Hanwha Life’s AI research center and a team led by Prof. Markus Pelger of Stanford University’s Mathematical and Computational Finance Program. The code and sample datasets used in the study will be made publicly available via GitHub.

BY KIM MIN-YOUNG [[email protected]]