Master's Thesis Internship – Agentic AI for Risk Management

Role
As a master's thesis intern, you will investigate how Agentic AI can be applied within Risk Management in a way that is transparent, explainable and aligned with governance and regulatory expectations. You will translate your research into practical artefacts and evaluate how reliable, auditable validation can strengthen human oversight and trust.

The team
You will work with colleagues at ING who operate at the intersection of risk management, modelling, technology, governance and responsible AI. The environment is collaborative and international, with room to shape the use case together with subject-matter experts while maintaining a clear academic research contribution.

Key Responsibilities

• Define the use case: Select and scope a suitable stage of the model or AI-system lifecycle, such as development, documentation, monitoring, governance, control execution or change review. 

• Develop an Agentic AI artefact: Design and prototype an agentic solution that supports the selected risk-management activity. 

• Build a transparent validator agent: Create a second artefact that assesses the first agent's outputs against predefined governance, control and model-risk criteria, while providing explainable and auditable review support rather than replacing human validation. 

• Evaluate effectiveness: Test transparency and explainability, the detection of known or intentionally seeded errors, and - as a stretch objective - the influence of transparency on human trust, oversight and decision-making. 

• Review existing practice: Analyze relevant academic and industry approaches to model and AI monitoring, hallucination and reliability measurement, confidence scoring, output verification, fairness, safety guardrails and responsible AI controls. 

• Assess document automation: Review state-of-the-art approaches, benchmarks, best practices and validation frameworks for AI-generated documentation. 

• Translate regulation into design criteria: Take relevant governance and regulatory expectations into account, including the EU AI Act, and turn them into practical evaluation criteria for the artefacts. 

• Communicate your findings: Document the research method, design decisions, limitations, results and recommendations, and present them clearly to academic and ING stakeholders. 

Qualifications:

• Current enrolment in a relevant master's program, such as Artificial Intelligence, Data Science, Computer Science, Information Systems, Econometrics, Business Analytics, Risk Management or a related field 

• Interest in Agentic AI, generative AI, model risk management, responsible AI or financial risk management 

• Ability to design and prototype an AI-enabled solution; experience with Python and common AI or machine-learning tooling is beneficial 

• A structured research mindset and familiarity with qualitative and/or quantitative evaluation methods 

• Strong analytical skills and the ability to translate governance and regulatory concepts into practical design and test criteria 

• Clear written and verbal communication skills, attention to detail and confidence working with stakeholders from different disciplines 

What We Offer:

• A thesis topic at the forefront of AI, risk management and responsible innovation 

• The opportunity to build and evaluate practical artefacts rather than conduct a literature-only study 

• Access to experienced colleagues across risk, modelling, technology and governance 

• A collaborative, international and learning-focused environment with regular feedback 

• The opportunity to develop a professional network within ING and gain experience in a global bank 

• Freedom to refine the precise lifecycle stage and use case so that the research remains both academically relevant and practically valuable 

Rewards and benefits
This is a great opportunity to train with highly skilled people who are experts in their field. You’ll do a lot and learn a lot – not only about your specialist area and the bank, but also about yourself and whether this type of environment is right for you.
You’ll also benefit from:

• Internship allowance of 700 EUR based on 36 hours work week

• Your own work laptop

• Hybrid working to blend home working for focus and office working for collaboration and co-creation

• Personal growth and challenging work with endless possibilities

• An informal working environment with innovative colleagues

During the duration of your internship at ING, it is mandatory to be enrolled at a Dutch university (or EU-university for EU passport holders).

Want to apply directly?

Please upload your CV and motivation letter by clicking the ‘Apply’ button.

About our internships
Every year, more than 350 students join our internship program. While there are no guarantees about your future, many of our former interns move into a permanent role or onto our International Talent Programme (traineeship).
Whatever happens, an internship at ING is the ideal opportunity to meet a wide variety of people, to build up your own network, and to learn about many different aspects of banking – put simply, it’s a great start to your career.