Introduction

This course covers emerging topics in the area of financial technology and also allow students to develop practical programming, statistics, and mathematical skills that are valued in the Fintech industry. We will explore topics from both theoretical and practical perspectives in the areas of digital currency and blockchain technologies, automated wealth management, digital lending, peer-to-peer applications including payments and insurance, machine learning financial applications.
Pre-requisite: FE520 (Introduction to Python for Financial Applications)

Course Outcomes

After successful completion of this course, students will:

• Be conversant in both the main theoretical ideas and high-level concepts of the financial technology topics to be discussed.
• In addition, students should aim to become proficient in the implementation of key ideas behind such topics.
• The main aim of this course is to give students exposure to core ideas in financial technology as well as develop hands-on programming skills in the Fintech area.
• Give students exposure to core ideas in financial technology as well as develop hands-on programming skills in the Fintech area.
• Students will also be given outlines for a main project for this course which may lead into future research projects or a master’s thesis topic.
• Finally, this course is a precursor for further Fintech topic specific graduate courses.

Recommended Readings

• Mastering Ethereum: Building Smart Contracts and DApps (2018) by Andreas M. Antonopoulos and Gavin Wood. ISBN: 1491971940.
• Blockchain Bubble or Revolution: The Future of Bitcoin, Blockchains, and Cryptocurrencies (2019)by Neel Mehta, Aditya Agashe and Parth Detroja. ISBN: 0578528150.
• DeFi and the Futrue of Finance (2021) by Campbell R Harvey, Ashwin Ramachandran and Joey Santoro. ISBN: 1119836018.
• Python for Data Analysis: Data Wrangling with Pandas, NumPy, and IPython (2017) by William McKinney. ISBN: 1491957662.

Grading Policies