Genco Ceylan
Congratulations to Genco Ceylan from King & Wood Mallesons for winning the BFSLA Research Essay Prize for 2025. Genco's essay was "Shifting the Equitable Paradigm: The Penalties Doctrine as a Limiting Principle in Lending".
Research Essay Prize
The BFSLA 2025 Research Essay Competition is now closed. If you have any questions about the 2026 prize, please contact 2025researchprize@bfsla.org
2025 Research Essay Prize winner
Layton Hubble
2024 Research Essay prize winner
Layton is a Law Graduate at King & Wood Mallesons in Sydney. His submission to the Prize, When the Coins Begin to Mix: The Reserve Bank of Australia’s Central Bank Digital Currency Mandate, was the subject of his honours thesis at the University of New South Wales.
Lachlan McIntyre
2023 Research Essay prize winner
Lachlan McIntyre, MSc (Law and Finance) (Distinction), University of Oxford; LLB (Hons I), BCom, University of Sydney
Lachlan recently graduated with Distinction from the Masters in Law and Finance programme at the University of Oxford.
Research Prize Recipients
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| Year | Recipient | Topic |
|---|---|---|
| 2025 | Genco Ceylan | Shifting the Equitable Paradigm: The Penalties Doctrine as a Limiting Principle in Lending |
| 2024 | Layton Hubble | When the coins begin to mix: the Reserve Bank of Australia’s central bank digital currency mandate. |
| 2023 | Lachlan McIntyre | Why a Director can and should be held liable for inducing their company's breach of trust |
| 2022 | Anna Kretowicz | The Quincecare Quagmire: Clarifying the Duty in Australian Law |
| 2021 | William Porter | Directing the Sinking Ship - Where to From Here |
Showing 1 to 5 of 49 entries
About the Prize
The BFSLA
The Banking and Financial Services Law Association (or BFSLA) is the leading professional organisation for banking and financial services law in Australia and New Zealand. The BFSLA’s objects include the pursuit and dissemination of knowledge of banking and financial services law and practice in Australia and New Zealand, including by encouraging research.
To that end, each year the BFSLA invites eligible persons to submit research essays on important matters in banking and financial services (including insolvency) law and/or practice that are currently topical in Australia or New Zealand, in competition for a prize pool.
Authors
Authors must be citizens or permanent residents of Australia or New Zealand at the time of submission (but need not be living in Australia or New Zealand at that time).
A person may not submit more than one entry (whether alone or with other authors). An entry may not have more than two authors.
A person is not eligible for the prize in 2025 if they have won any part of the BFSLA’s Research Essay Prize (whether alone or jointly) in any of the previous five years.
Members of the Board of the BFSLA, and persons engaged by the Board to assist in the assessment of entries, are not eligible to enter. The competition is otherwise open to all, including students, academics and practitioners (whether in private practice, in-house or at the bar), whether full time, part time or retired.
Entries
Entries must be in English and must comply with the Australian Guide to Legal Citation (4th ed. 2018). They must not be more than 10,000 words in length (excluding reasonable footnoting).
Entries must be the author’s original work and be unpublished at the time of submission and must remain unpublished until the competition results are announced, unless the Board agrees otherwise.
Copyright in all entries remains with the author(s). However, by submitting an entry, each author agrees that, should they win a prize with the entry, they will grant the BFSLA a perpetual non-exclusive royalty-free licence to publish the entry, or excerpts from it, on the BFSLA’s website (with authorship acknowledged), and to use the entry and the author’s name in marketing material to promote the BFSLA and its objects.
The BFSLA may also propose that winning entries, and other entries worthy of publication, be submitted for publication in the Journal of Banking and Finance Law and Practice (Thomson Reuters, in conjunction with the BFSLA), but authors are not obliged to accept that proposal.