The One About Recommenders (ft. OCBC AI Labs)

What makes a good recommendation? Recommendation systems are often associated with streaming platforms and e-commerce, but every domain comes with its own objectives, constraints, and trade-offs. Hear from practitioners building production recommender systems across government…

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What makes a good recommendation? Recommendation systems are often associated with streaming platforms and e-commerce, but every domain comes with its own objectives, constraints, and trade-offs. Hear from practitioners building production recommender systems across government and industry, and learn how they balance personalisation, relevance, and real-world outcomes in different operating environments. More About the Sharings Jiew Peng (Data Scientist, GovTech) will share on "When Clicks Aren't the Goal: Recommender Systems in Government." Commercial recommenders such as Netflix, YouTube, and Amazon are typically designed to optimise for one thing: engagement. But what happens when getting more clicks actively works against your goal? Jiew Peng will share how GovTech builds search and recommender systems for the government's jobs and skills domain, and why recommendation systems in the public sector challenge many of the assumptions behind commercial recommenders. Through real production systems, he'll discuss the technical trade-offs and engineering decisions involved in designing recommendation systems where success is measured by outcomes, rather than engagement. (Technical Level: 200) Chester, Serhad & Brandon (OCBC) will share on “Recommending What Matters: From Digital Platforms to Real-Time Personalization” Explore how OCBC Bank's AI Lab has built and operationalised recommendation systems across multiple digital banking platforms, from retail and wealth internet banking to mobile banking. Hear more about the real-world challenges and decisions behind taking these systems from model development to live production, serving personalised offers and content to customers at scale. They'll also explore the next evolution of these systems, using real-time customer signals to power more contextual and dynamic omni-channel personalisation. (Technical Level: 200) More About the Speakers Lim Jiew Peng is a Data Scientist at GovTech, working on search engines and recommender systems in the government jobs and skills domain. His work spans the entire stack involved: model development, model serving, software engineering and devops Chester Gan is a Senior Data Scientist at OCBC, where he develops and productionises machine learning solutions across retail banking. His work spans recommendation systems, customer propensity modelling, mortgage retention, investment product recommendations, and credit card engagement, delivering AI-driven solutions that have generated significant business impact. Prior to OCBC, Chester worked at Cartrack, applying machine learning to vehicle telematics and geospatial data to improve customer risk prediction and fleet operations. Serhad Sarica is a Lead Data Scientist and Vice President at OCBC Bank's AI Lab, where he leads the bank's core revenue-generating AI portfolio spanning recommendation systems, propensity modelling, reinforcement learning, and customer-facing conversational AI. With over 14 years of experience across banking, AI research, and systems engineering, he has built production machine learning systems ranging from financial crime detection to LLM-powered agent pipelines. Serhad holds a PhD from the Singapore University of Technology and Design and has published over 20 peer-reviewed papers alongside a patent in AI-assisted design ideation. Brandon Tan is a Lead Product Owner & Product Manager for Global Transaction Banking at OCBC, where he leads the Mobile Innovation team. Working across business, technology, data, and design, his team develops and continuously enhances the bank's mobile banking platforms, focusing on accelerating innovation, optimising customer journeys, and delivering new digital capabilities. More About The Series AI Wednesdays is Lorong AI’s weekly gathering, bringing together practitioners, researchers and innovators for technical discussions on research insights, product development and engineering practices. Get involved: Learn more about Lorong AI | Speaker Sign-up | WhatsApp Community | LinkedIn | X