Radek Stech becomes CEO of ABC Score Lab and Michael Gladczuk becomes CTO as Global PSSL brings research and technology together to develop practical approaches to financial governance
27 October 2026 – Global PSSL CIC is concentrating its activities on ABC Score™ Lab. Through the Lab, it will develop and test practical approaches to help financial organisations make better-informed decisions, build trust in their operations and use technology responsibly.
Radek Stech has been appointed Chief Executive Officer of ABC Score Lab, while Michael Gladczuk takes on the role of Chief Technology Officer. Together, they will lead the Lab’s next stage of development, drawing on research, experience of financial markets and technical expert.
ABC Score Lab will seek to strengthen transparency and governance across a range of financial activities, including securities lending. Its work will explore how organisations can translate governance commitments into practices that support everyday decisions, reflect commercial realities and provide useful evidence to clients, partners and other stakeholders.
The Lab will provide an environment in which approaches and supporting technology can be developed, tested and refined before wider implementation. Understanding the challenges organisations face, from managing complex business relationships to introducing new technology, will inform that work.
Stech, the founder of ABC Score, will lead the Lab’s strategic direction and development as CEO. His role connects the initiative’s research foundations and engagement with financial market stakeholders with its ambition to build practical financial governance technology.
Gladczuk moves from Chief Technology Advisor to CTO of ABC Score Lab. The Founder and CEO of ACM Global Tech, he brings expertise in agentic AI, blockchain trust layers and post-quantum security to its technology development. He has also joined the board of Global PSSL CIC alongside Michael Riggs, a non-executive director who currently works within the United Nations system.
Radek Stech, CEO of ABC Score Lab, said, “Good governance has to work for the people making decisions. Financial organisations need to understand the information they rely on, manage relationships across complex markets and assess where new technology can improve their operations.
“We want to understand those pressures and develop approaches that organisations can use in practice. Through ABC Score Lab, we can bring research and technology together, test ideas and learn from where existing approaches work well or need to improve.
“Our aim is to make transparency useful to businesses, governments and other organisations, and meaningful to the people and communities affected by their decisions. With Michael taking on the CTO role, we have the technical leadership to develop practical ways of putting that ambition into effect.”
ABC Score will continue to be maintained and developed, with the Lab becoming Global PSSL CIC’s principal workstream. The Global PSSL Principles will remain in place, and the Lab will give practical effect to the Transparency Principle in particular.
ABC Score Lab is not an ESG initiative. It will examine and challenge established approaches, including those in securities lending and sustainable finance, through evidence, critical scrutiny and innovation. Its own work will remain open to challenge, with good governance, responsible technology and transparency underpinning its development.
As part of the transition, Global PSSL CIC is suspending its Secretariat, College of Advisors and existing working teams to concentrate its activities on the Lab.
The organisation will review these arrangements before submitting its next annual report to the CIC Regulator, including whether the refocused work requires formal amendments to its objects. It continues to seek clarification on matters relevant to the transition and will take stakeholders’ interests into account.
Research supported by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), part of UK Research and Innovation, through the Sustainable Finance, the Law and Stakeholders (SFLS) project at the University of Exeter, provides an important thread of continuity. The work began with values-based banking and financial regulation, expanded into engagement with major beneficial owners and asset managers representing trillions in assets on principles for sustainable securities lending, and subsequently informed work through the International Securities Lending Association (ISLA) Council for Sustainable Finance (ICSF) and, later, independently through Global PSSL CIC. ABC Score Lab will draw on this research history as it develops its broader work on transparency and financial governance.
The Global Alliance for Banking on Values (GABV) and the World Bank were project partners on the original ESRC grant, which ended in February 2023. Global PSSL CIC will continue to document this research foundation, how the work has developed and the contributions made along the way, including to support the ongoing reporting of relevant research outcomes and impacts.
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About ABC Score™ Lab
ABC Score™ Lab (Assess–Balance–Calibrate) is the principal workstream of Global PSSL CIC, an independent UK Community Interest Company (CIC) overseen by the CIC Regulator. The Lab draws on the Global PSSL Transparency Principle to develop and test practical approaches to transparency, informed decision-making and governance across the wider financial system.
