Handbook

Financial Technology (FinTech) is a rapidly growing field in finance where technology is used to enhance and reimagine financial services and sometimes results in disruptive changes. The most well-known examples are payment systems (PayPal, WeChat, Bitcoin and cryptocurrency), portfolio management and Robo-advice (US, Europe, Australia), peer-to-peer lending (US, China, India and elsewhere), high-frequency trading (global), and decentralized finance (of which Bitcoin and cryptocurrency form the foundation). Established financial services firms (BigTech) and entrepreneurs (FinTech) both demand talent in this space as FinTech products are by nature scalable and have potential for huge impact in a financial services business.

Parallel to elevating students’ finance knowledge and skills via MFIN courses, the Financial Technology specialisation, co-developed with financial services industry experts, explores how big data and other technologies allow FinTech start-ups to cause consumers to shift away from traditional finance - fundamentally changing the way money is raised, transferred, stored, loaned, and invested around the world. Students will experience FinTech courses via the Integrated Learning Laboratory (iLab): gaining personal access to financial market data platforms, handling financial market and unstructured data, learning how financial products work via the Python programming language, trading using the leading stock trading platform used by brokerage firms, and interacting with practitioners.