/// FINTECH AT THE ARISON SCHOOL OF BUSINESS

Students of the Arison School of Business have a unique set of courses that aim to position them not just as business leaders, but leaders who can manage firms at the frontier of finance and technology. For the past couple of years, Prof. Asaf Manela has been teaching a semester-long fintech workshop. This course provides an overview of financial technology followed by hands-on applications to several topics in fintech. Topics covered include: data-driven credit modeling; crypto; blockchain; algorithmic trading; algorithm fairness; and natural language processing. The course also discusses the regulatory aspects of fintech, covers different methods and emphasizes practical applications. In the course, students develop coding and data analytics skills to address real-world problems faced in the financial sector.

The two most disruptive technologies currently reshaping the finance industry are artificial intelligence and blockchain. Students in the course gain a deeper understanding of what AI can do and what it cannot do yet, and learn how to think about the role of human business managers in the presence of powerful artificial systems of intelligence. Beyond the important technological advances in machine learning, such systems require domain expertise and data generation strategies, which are often overlooked.

Blockchain technology, familiar to many from popular cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, is gradually transforming the financial sector. Decentralized Finance (DeFi) promises to replace centralized financial intermediaries that require a high degree of trust (think Lehman Brothers in 2008 or FTX in 2022), with blockchain-based smart contracts that are more transparent, automatic, and require less trust. Students in the course learn how blockchains work and what parts of the DeFi promise are feasible and realistic to expect in the near and long term.