Karen Croxson

Karen Croxson

Chief Data and Technology Insights Officer

Karen Croxson is the Chief Data and Technology Insights Officer at the Competition and Markets Authority, United Kingdom. Karen formerly was the Deputy Chief Economist at the United Kingdom’s Financial Conduct Authority, where she led the FCA’s scientific research program, co-led several AI and Digital Markets Policy initiatives, and participated in a wide variety of international working groups. Karen previously was a principal at QuantumBlack, where she led teams of data scientists, engineers, and domain experts in using advanced analytics to solve strategic problems. She has also worked as an academic economist at Oxford University and a strategy consultant at McKinsey. She holds a PhD in game theory and applied econometrics from Oxford, where she is a guest lecturer in Economics for Public Policy at the Blavatnik School of Government and a member of the advisory board for its MSc in Social Data Science program.

Related Content For Karen Croxson


Against the backdrop of growing adoption of algorithmic decision-making, a team of researchers from the Financial Conduct Authority simulates the transition from logistic regression credit scoring models to ensemble machine learning models using credit file data for 800,000 UK borrowers. They find that machine learning credit models are more accurate and that machine learning models neither amplify nor eliminate bias where fairness criteria focus on overall accuracy and error rates for subgroups defined by race, gender, and other protect class characteristics.