NBAE 5600 - Introduction to FinTech, Finnovation and Finalytics

Spring. 1 credit. S/U grades only (no audit).

W. Cong.

The goal of the course is to give a systematic and rigorous introduction to the emerging areas of financial technology, digital economy, and applications of big data, machine learning, and AI in business economics. This EMBA Elective is comprised of 5 intensive sessions (detailed in course outline) of lectures, discussions, guest lectures, and readings.

A confluence of events and trends have provided the opportunity for technological disruption of the financial services, investments, and other business-related fields as never seen before. With an estimated $90BN of annual financial services profitability at risk by 2020, there is a genuine demand for peer-to-peer interactions and functional trust systems. Customers, particularly millennials, are eagerly embracing startups over traditional financial services providers. Venture Capitalists are also providing “easy money.” Top employment talent is willing to forgo Wall St compensation for Fintech optionality. Yet financial institutions have been slow to embrace new product offerings and the digital economy (focusing on post-crisis balance sheet strength vs. customer needs, innovation, growth) and regulators are often left in quagmires due to the novelty and fast-evolving nature of the technologies and business models involved.

Against such a backdrop, the course aims to provide a concise but insightful overview of technologies such as distributed ledgers or artificial intelligence, so that students without the technical background can still obtain a working knowledge of the fields when examining their applications in finance and business-related fields. Students will also analyze financial innovations in payments, lending, and crowdfunding, etc., to deepen their understanding of the economics of fintech and big data, as well as the use of analytics brought forth by advances in machine learning and data science.

Our focus is on providing high-level pictures and an organizing framework based on rigorous academic and industry research that are rarely available from generic media discussion or popular books. In particular, we want to clarify misconceptions, identify links across various areas of FinTech, separate hypes from promising innovations, analyze past moves, discuss current trends, and shed lights on future opportunities for both researchers and practitioners. The insights from the course should guide the approach to real problems and solutions at start-ups, traditional financial services firms, and the VC and consulting communities which serve them.

The course is designed for (i) executives and leaders who would like to effectively manage teams working on FinTech and economic big data; (ii) investors who need to evaluate startups and companies without being bogged down by the technical details; (iii) entrepreneurs with domain expertise but would like to understand the business and economic potential/aspects of the technologies; (iv) employees and managers who need to communicate or collaborate across fields to innovate at various workplaces. Students should have a passion to explore this emerging field rather than treating the course as a vehicle with light workload to passively fulfill program requirement.