Have you talked to your kids about data science? With Daniele Forni
"Data is a bit like the blood of an organisation. It goes everywhere. However, because it goes everywhere, you cannot just silo it somewhere. Of course, you need to have some standards around data, but every part of the of a business has to be responsible for the data".
Daniele Forni cuts through systems and technologies to solve the complex data issues that otherwise prevent financial institutions and startups from unlocking their data potential. And luckily, he loves sharing those insights with us: on LinkedIn, at conferences, in articles, in free-to-download reports such as his Guide to Data for AI, and in books for professionals and their kids alike!
You can find all of Daniele's work at https://www.danieleforni.com/
Or follow him on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/danieleforni/ And he's just moved to Hong Kong, so if you're there, pop into HSBC and say hello 😁
The Pirate and R is on your local Amazon or directly at www.littledatascientist.co.uk
Is It Pronounced Data or Data? is at https://lnkd.in/e3HZRN-d (USA), https://lnkd.in/excjrGCW (UK), https://lnkd.in/eAy2nsPT (IT), and https://lnkd.in/eyYdYw3U (ITA)
Daniele's music (Doctor Shall Burn) is at https://open.spotify.com/artist/4KR0BUcZj5eOV9mxLgrniw?si=SPhptSMoTU-GchQruC-PmA
I'm on LinkedIn and always open to new genuine connections - https://www.linkedin.com/in/brendanlegrange - please do reach out, and follow the show's page, too
Meanwhile, my action-adventure novels are on Amazon, some versions even for free, and my work with ConfirmU and our gamified psychometric scores is discussed at https://confirmu.com/ and on episode 24 of this show https://www.howtolendmoneytostrangers.show/episodes/episode-24
If you have any feedback or questions, or if you would like to participate in the show, please feel free to reach out to me via the contact page on this site.
Keep well, Brendan
The full written transcript, with timestamps, is below:
Danielle Forni 0:00
I like numbers. I like formulas. I like patterns. All of that is basically the drum as an instrument, you're building patterns. You can express something about yourself that sometimes words or sometimes images cannot.
And there is physicality of it, of course, with the drums, which is again with ADHD, I'm always very active, I suppose it works out really well.
The thing that I only learned a bit later on in life, is that you have to be generous with your time, with your ideas, but also you can only improve, you can only learn if you discuss with people, if you share your ideas. When I started to publish this guide, some people come back with a suggestion and say, 'why don't you talk about AI? Why don't you talk about ethics of data'. So I really like this dialogue.
Brendan Le Grange 1:05
"Marco enters a city. He sees someone in a square living a life for an instant that could be his, he could now be in that man's place if he had stopped in time long ago. Or if long ago at a crossroads, instead of taking one road he had taken the opposite one and, after long wandering, he had come to be in the place of that man in the square.
By now from that real or hypothetical past of his, he is excluded. He cannot stop. He must go on to another city where another of his past awaits him, or something perhaps that had been a possible future of his and is now someone else's present. Futures not achieved are only branches of the past dead branches."
Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities was an assigned reading for one of the courses in my Information Design masters. It's a slightly bizarre little book, or perhaps just more poetic than my impatient brain is used to. But I've also never forgotten it. It tells an imagined version of the story of Venice's most famous explorer, Marco Polo.
Marco. Polo. Apparently that game was so named in the US in the mid 60s became popular parlance among expats in Hong Kong by the mid 70s. And then from there spread to the UK and beyond. And I can vouch for it having reached the southernmost tip of Africa by the 80s. Beloved explorer, and also just that guy from the swimming pool game, is there anyone else with such an eclectic legacy? Welcome to How to Lend Money to Strangers with Brendan le Grange.
Danielle Forni, director of credit insights and intelligence at HSBC, author and pretty aggressive drummer, as I heard from your tracks, welcome to the show.
Danielle Forni 3:05
Thank you, Brendan,
Brendan Le Grange 3:06
Danielle, that's a colourful career, so before we get into your two primary current roles, let's talk about your roots. What did your early career look like? And with all those various interests of yours, how did you end up in credit risk?
Danielle Forni 3:21
It's gonna take a while to explain. I need to go back to my teenage years where I was a mountain climber. So I used to climb a lot in the Alps and do expeditions. And when I was like, 16/ 17 in the Andes and in the Himalayas, those experiences make me think that there is something else in the world apart from my little town, in the Alps, in Italy.
And so at university, I decided to study languages, and specifically Chinese because I wanted to travel the world I wanted to explore, I wanted to meet the people.
Brendan Le Grange 3:58
Following the footsteps of the great Marco Polo?
Danielle Forni 4:03
Exactly, well, exactly, or Matteo Ricci, which is another Italian that in the 1600s went to China. And that brought me to travel across Asia, across China, living there working there for a while.
And after I just graduated from my bachelor, I found out that I really enjoyed economics. I always liked numbers, patterns. I always like functions and formulas, you know. I like the abstraction of it. So I decided to take a postgraduate degree, a master's in economics, and a went to Warwick in the UK. And that's what moved me from looking at dictionaries to looking at calculators! They're still languages to some extent, you know, but I change the dynamics.
And then, as any young person that is graduating economics, i did it to make some money. So I started in banking!
Brendan Le Grange 5:03
Yeah, and then that led to what's now when the show goes out, almost to the day, a 10 year career at HSBC spanning functions and geographies. So, you know, as I said, Director of Credit Insights and Intelligence, it's not a role I was familiar with within HSBC, or any big bank, so tell me, what does your role in campus? And how are you helping the bank get better at what it does?
Danielle Forni 5:26
So the role is insights and intelligence. And those two words are a bit fluffy, they don't really mean much, you know. And that's a bit like my job which is like a lot of many different things. But the way that I would translate it for people is that my job is divided into two areas.
One is more like a project lead, so the classic programme manager where I have budgets, people and outcomes that need to deliver for the business. It could be, for example, the creation of a new analytics tool that enables people to take credit decisions to have better information. And that to some extent, is a bit the insight and intelligence. So instead delivery, the enabling of these things.
In other organisations, you will find this role as a core strat, that basically is a strat or quant specifically for the infrastructure, that builds tool for others to use.
Brendan Le Grange 6:29
We've had decades now of fintechs growing and almost 80% of the story of fintechs will always be told as 'the big established banks have legacy systems that that aren't fit for purpose'. And I guess in a way, you are making sure the bank doesn't end up in that position, with a system that's 10 years out of date and no idea where where the market is at the moment.
Danielle Forni 6:51
Exactly. And you're, you're hitting the nail on the head in that sense, because I have been, to some extent, chosen for this role, but also I came to this role, because I have a very strong business background.
So I have looked at transactions I had spoken with customers, you know, had the classic credit career at the beginning, but also very strong quant and project management. And in this role of infrastructure core strat, I'm able to guide technology into what the pieces want to do, often in large organisations, people in leadership position, they are there because they are good managers, because they're good salesmen, not necessarily because they know the technology well. So it's very difficult for them to make a decision. And my my main goal is to translate technology and solution to the business leaders so that they can take informed decisions.
The first half of my job is being a core strat, but the second half of my job is to make insights to help making better decisions in credit.
Usually my analysis starts with 'did you know that this has happened? And did you know that you could do this to fix it?' Or 'did you know that this collateral is not the most efficient way to handle this transaction from a capital point of view?'
So the infrastructure side, but also the users of the infrastructure? I learned by doing and then I can actually go and fix things if they don't work as expected, which is quite interesting.
Brendan Le Grange 8:27
Yeah, I think it's really interesting but also really important, because that ability to take that bird's eye view, I think, and get lost, of course, some leaders of risk teams will be able to do that from time to time.
But as we get more into AI tools, and it's easier to drag and drop model building, I think there is this risk that you will have people running off on projects without stopping to think of those 'did you know why are we doing it this ways. Have we thought of all the gaps covered? But of course, also probably very difficult to hire for as well!
Danielle Forni 8:57
Yes, it's quite challenging.
Right now, I am going through a hiring process for some people. And in my case, I always like to have people that are technologically savvy, because I can teach the business aspect of it. It is a bit more difficult to get somebody who has a banking background, and then teach data science. And as a matter of fact, every week, I think I spend four hours at least in teaching sessions about what is a derivative, what is a repo, what is a credit application? Because these young people, of course, they come out with massive computer science as in physics, they don't necessarily know what we're doing. So it's important to add the context.
Brendan Le Grange 9:39
And I think your background there with languages and you know, the formula side of mathematics are all inherently about logically getting from point A to point B. You know, we've can talk about it in storytelling terms, but also in mathematical terms. It's that way of thinking about this links to that links to that gives us our output.
And I think a lot of quantitative people will, perhaps even unknowingly, have that storytelling ability in this ability to build a chain of logic. And I guess that's what you can teach us the vocabulary for that the way of putting that in in a business context.
Danielle Forni 10:13
It's funny that every time I go to work and I go there, like two times a week, I always have my pens in my pocket, because data and processes and system is all about diagrams. It's all about flows. And you need to have a visual aspect you need to visualise them to understand them. It's very difficult just to talk
Brendan Le Grange 10:33
And Danielle, yeah, an MSc in economics, quad roles, first in Deutsche Bank and then as we said, a storied career at HSBC. That sounds like a sensible progression. And against that sort of backdrop, especially with the elements of storytelling and your level of language, as we've already heard about, it wouldn't be surprising for most people to hear you had written a book on data science. Until, perhaps, they heard it was a book about data science for kids! So talk to me about The Pirate and R.
Danielle Forni 11:01
Yeah, so I have a daughter, she's now six years old. And when she was one, two years old, I had this desire of sharing with her what I do on a day to day basis. So I was trying to look for some books and things and material just to, you know, to read something, I couldn't find anything that really was exactly what I was after. And so I said, well, I can write it myself, it shouldn't be too difficult.
So I went on Fiverr, I got an illustrator. I put all the structural things together, and then I got a publishing company to publish it.
Brendan Le Grange 11:42
And it's not your only book, you also do write books for for us and the audience of this show. So tell me also, Is It Pronounced Data or Data?
Or what's the story behind that one?
Danielle Forni 11:54
Yeah, so for me, it is pronounced data, I cannot pronounce it as data, it sounds a bit odd for me.
But that book was born out of yet another trigger, I started to go speak at conferences about credit risk and data around two years ago. And every time I brought a topic at these conferences, I realised that everyone had the same issues. Everyone thought that we had these friction between technology and business decisions.
However, it was clear that the were not a lot of solutions for it. So I wrote the book, it started like a diary and then, little by little, it evolved into something a bit more structured, 11 things that large organisations get wrong when it comes to data. And I also tried to provide 11 solutions.
Brendan Le Grange 12:47
And generally, those books are available on Amazon, I see already £8.99 for Is It Pronounced Data or Data, I'll put the links in the show notes, people should check them out. But you also do write articles. And you said you're at conferences, doing a lot of speaking, you have a guide for data strategy that's available as a free download in English and Italian.
Not a lot of people go out of their way to put in the work to create a resources riches that just to give back to the industry. What was the inspiration behind that piece? What are its key messages?
Danielle Forni 13:18
Thank you for calling that out. The reason why I wanted to share again, for free, this guide them is because the thing that I only learned a bit later on in life is that you have to be first of all, generous with your time with your ideas. But also, you can only improve, you can only learn if you discuss with people if you share your ideas. And the best way to do it is to first share your ideas.
When I started to, to publish this guide, some people come back with a suggestion and say, 'why didn't you talk about AI? Why don't you talk about ethics of data'. So now I'm preparing a new one a bit a longer one where I touch upon those, those topics. And by doing that, I'm also learning so I like this dialogue. And today with social media, with the internet, it's so easy to get an audience of people that you share your idea with.
Brendan Le Grange 14:21
You talk about the generosity there. There's also a fear or nervousness as soon as you hit that publish button and you would have felt it when you publish the books. I'm sure you feel it when you publish these guides. As soon as we make something public, obviously it becomes available for criticism, as you say that can come back as feedback that really actually benefits you in the long run but it's not a it's not an easy process to hit it and make it go live.
But people that are thinking about doing something similar to this actually got you researching it has got you thinking yeah, how can I create this into a fully formed thought? And I often feel with the writing or something like that podcast is it forces you to complete that thought? And we are in a world where it's very easy not to complete thinking, you know, just to half, get something done and move on.
Danielle Forni 15:06
Exactly.
And I really like how you said that just before you press publish, there is always a bit of fear of being judged, of course, at the end of the day, but at the same time, for the listeners, see if there's any ideas, I really recommend doing it, because it's just the self imposed fear.
People do not really care too much about what you think, however, it's good that the people that really care about what you think, whatever they say, whether it's positive or negative, it will definitely improve you, it will improve your, your own style, improve your own content.
Brendan Le Grange 15:40
Yeah, just because I think at this point, people may be wanting to reach out to you to have their conversations to see the work, maybe see where you're speaking, tell me where people can find you where people can find your content.
But then I want to come back and quickly ask you one more question about that. But if people want to speak to Daniele Forni, where do they find him online?
Danielle Forni 15:59
Yes, it's very easy. I have a website and www.danieleforni.com
But LinkedIn is the main place where I post a post every day, I try to be very active, I have a lot of opinions, and I want to share them. And sometimes people reply with positive comments. Sometimes people do not care. But if you if somebody that listens to this podcast, is interested, just send me a message, and then always reply!
Perfect. I'll put those links again, in the show notes. You're one of the top voices there on LinkedIn on data science and credit risk, so people with a broad range of interests should check you out.
Brendan Le Grange 16:16
But I want to go back to one last question about the guide. And I guess about the book. And that's this idea of recurring themes and problems that people working with data face, you know, across the board, I think, you know, we come from a world where we used to ring fence our data very carefully.
And the strength of our lending strategies often used to be the strength of our data, we would all use fairly similar techniques. When we're talking big banks, you know, often using the same tools. And so it was our data and our unique experience of our data that made us different.
And we, I think, from that can feel like, oh, you know, we're the only ones who have a certain problem, or we can't tell somebody else, we've got this problem. But you have noticed, you know, the same things in different places. So talk to you about that is that the reality of the world that actually we all have fairly similar experiences.
Danielle Forni 17:22
I think we're all similar in the sense that we think about data in the wrong way, going to be promoted a bit, going against the grain.
But effectively, if you think about it, there is no company in the world, maybe just a few, whose whole businesses is data, noone really just creates data, noone really just handles data. However, every company, whether you're logistics, retailer, bank insurance, your mom and pop shops on a corner, they all deal with data - you've got prices, you've got sales, you've got measurements, if you are building a house.
However, as you said, often in organisations, they try to put a silo around data, they say, I have a Chief Data Office, I have a data function, I have specifically data processing, and data is a bit like the blood of an organisation. It goes everywhere, however, because it goes everywhere, you cannot just silo it somewhere. Of course, you need to have some patterns, some standards around data, but every part of the of a business has to be responsible for the data.
Often, the main probably complaint that I hear is that whenever there is a problem of data, everyone pointed finger to somebody, and no one owns it. And the reality is that actually, we all own the data, because we can only do our jobs, any job only if your data. Again, this is what I'm trying to do in my small world, tend to switch the paradigm. I want everyone to own the data, I want everyone to be responsible for it, not just raise any incident, give it to the data people and the result it out. And
Brendan Le Grange 19:09
I think maybe sort of risking stretching a metaphor a bit too far. But three loop all the way back to that idea of language from the start, you know, we can all have the data on our desk that we work with, and we can feel like we understand it. But that data is always just describing a far more complex, real life thing. And you know, it's a simplification of the real world. And we can sit in one way, but it could be nuanced way missing. And the more people that get involved with the data, the more we can understand it, the more likely we are to hear an interesting take on it or broaden our experience of it our vocabulary if we allow that. And I'm not an expert in organisational setups and structures, but I do really like the approach of having a team who sits out there. They're not about turning the data into a model in the way we've done it for 10 years now just using more advanced tools, but we've got to Especially thinking about data more philosophically more strategically, I guess is the better word. And seeing Do we have the tools? Do we have the data? Do people understand the tools and the data? Are people thinking outside the box? Do they have the, you know, the capacity and the energy to do that is something that any people any organisation working with data should think about to get the full benefit of that. So yeah, Danieli, thank you so much for your your inputs on that. neurodiversity is also a topic that's very close to your heart. So as we close talk to me about the work that you're doing there, and what inspires that, I'll try to
Danielle Forni 20:34
highlight a couple of things because I could talk for hours, but Emily diagnoses in terms of neurodiversity. When I was around 3530 634 years ago, I got diagnosed with autism, and with ADHD, and that process of discovery myself, or rediscovering myself, understanding how my brain actually works was very scary, but also liberating. Because if you have like one of these mental health conditions, often is difficult to label difficult to identify what actually you're feeling. Instead, when you're able to say, well, actually, I have that particular condition, then you can really find the help and the support that you need. However, the flip side of it is that for 35 years, I leave to probably aim, let's say, suboptimal lifestyle, because I was dealing with a lot of issues, I was dealing with a lot of problems that I couldn't have, maybe have easier time. And I've been very lucky. And this is what I tell everyone, I've been very fortunate lucky to have a wonderful family to have opportunities at work to be able to make a career. But at the same time, I feel that there are many other people around me that may benefit from experience may benefit from knowing that there is support out there, there is help. And there is really value in identifying what your problems are. And I try to be as vocal as as I can, and want this to label me at the same time. But the trade to mention it every time I go to a speaking event or at work. And what I really like about it is that many parents have children that have other ot simulation HD, they reach out to me, they just want to talk because on the one hand, they can see that even though you're sorta conditioned, you can still have a, you know, a normal life. Yeah. But also often I try to explain in my own words, how I feel about certain things, so that they have a better way to get to understand their children. And this happens quite often, actually. And I'm very pleased to do that. And I don't, to some extent, I don't advertise that the people come and talk to me. But every time I talk about this, there is always somebody that reaches out. And I'm more than happy to help.
Brendan Le Grange 23:00
you've travelled the world, you work in a job that involves public speaking and dealing with people across the board, which for people unfamiliar with, you know, autism have close, those are things you would stereotypically think are unlikely to fit. So I think it does benefit to to hear from you in that sort of casual environment, just somebody can step up who's already succeeded can show Hey, no matter what biases people might have, or what sort of expectations they might have about people with ADHD or people with autism, it's something that doesn't hold me back from achieving where you've got to so yeah, it's a small part of the the bigger picture of how society needs to change. But it's great that that can be a part of the conversation there. Fantastic to hear that fantastic to hear what else you're doing in that credit and data science environment. Danila forney.com Daniela Forney on LinkedIn. As we said before, people should definitely go check that out. But thank you very much for your time, and especially for dialling in from your holiday in Italy. Thank you, Brenda.
Danielle Forni 24:03
And thank you very much. It was a very interesting conversation. But a little with esoteric with an anecdote which I found very interesting. I was a woodworker. And there was like a graduate from HSBC working in the same project with me, and she was young, 2021 years old, just after the divorce. And she comes to work dressed with boats with normal choices with baggy T shirts. And I told her like, I wish I could dress like you because that's very liberating, right to actually to be like, well, you know, that you can. And I was like, oh, wait a second. That's true. So from then on, every Friday, I go to work with the heavy metal tissue. And it's so funny how you know how some reality some things are in front of you. And you just need somebody to show it to you. And no one is better than I actually people are like, I like the t shirt. or what band is that? And you know so so it's a liberating sometimes to do these little things.
Brendan Le Grange 25:05
And thank you all for listening.
Please do look for and follow the show on your favourite podcast platform and share the updates widely on LinkedIn where lending nerds are found in our largest concentration. Plus, send me a connection request while you're there.
This show is written and recorded by myself Brendan le Grange in Brighton, England and edited by Fina Charleson of FC Productions.
Show music is by Iam_wake, and you can find show notes and written transcripts at www.HowtoLendMoneytoStrangers.show and I'll see you again next Thursday.