‘MS in Digital Innovation For FinTech’ Articles at Brandeis GPS Blog

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Faculty Spotlight: Khadijia Khartit

Faculty: Khadija Khartit

Program: Digital Innovation for FinTech

Course: RDFT 130 Launching FinTech Ventures

Expertise: Banking, Corporate Finance, Credit Cards, Cryptocurrency, Financial Planning, FinTech, General Business, Investing, Personal Finance

Education: Oklahoma State University, MBA and Boston College, MS

Bio: Khadija Khartit has 25 years of experience in management, investment banking, and startup advisory. Her investing and business background includes management in operating multinationals, investment banking, mergers and acquisitions, equity and debt capital raising, and tech startups’ advisory. Khadija worked on the fund-raising process as an advisor, an investor, and an entrepreneur. She worked on deals ranging from $100,000 to $500 million and on company sizes from green-field business plans to companies with $1 billion revenues and $100 million net income. Khadija is currently an executive advisor of KoreFusion, a global strategy consulting firm specialized in FinTech and payments. She is also the head of strategy at Sawi Exchange, a B2B FinTech based in Boston.

Why is this course important or valuable to a Digital Innovation for FinTech student?

In this course we tear down prominent cases in FinTech that are just getting bigger over the years (Stripe, Aunt Group, Bkash…). We link them to other cases rising and the changing landscape. Students learn from the real-world real-time moves of companies and what that means to be an effective worker, manager, intrapreneur, or entrepreneur.

Why do you enjoy teaching this course?

I find a safe space to think boldly, research with high vigor elements and arguments to enrich the discussion with students. My students are bright and as much as I inspire them to elevate the bar in their preparation to add to what their peers said, they also inspire me. We all set high standards to serve each other intellectually, and we grow together.

For more information on the Digital Innovation for FinTech or other online master’s degrees available at GPS, please visit brandeis.edu/gps.

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Leaders in Fintech are in High Demand and Highly Valued

July 30, 2021 / BrandeisGPS / 0 Comments

Leaders in FinTech — a rapidly growing field that focuses on a hybrid of finance, software, analytics and the user experience — are in high demand and highly valued. More and more organizations rely on blockchain and other new technologies to streamline financial and reporting systems. For that reason, Brandeis GPS created the Master of Science in Digital Innovation for FinTech, the first FinTech master’s degree in the country. The 30-credit fully online graduate program explores how to create innovative technology solutions for the fast-paced world of financial services. The program helps professionals combine innovation and entrepreneurship to develop financial solutions that use technology in innovative ways.

As startup founders, financial services innovators and active working professionals, our faculty structure their curriculum to draw on real-world expertise and connections. Upon degree completion, students are equipped to:

Design leading-edge financial solutions using emerging technologies.
Measure and communicate the ROI of FinTech solutions to stakeholders.
Apply financial theories to solve investor problems and design technology solutions.

The interactive seminar-style classes, with an average class size of 12, enhance the student experience, along with access to networking events, webinars and conference opportunities. The MS in Digital Innovation for FinTech gives FinTech professionals an opportunity to advance their careers in one of the most promising industries in today’s job market. When we asked Jake, a 2020 MS In Digital Innovation for Fintech Graduate, about the program, he said,

“The MS in Digital Innovation for FinTech has been excellent. I regularly speak to new contacts in the Fintech space and we have really amazing conversations. The materials have absolutely benefited my abilities to connect with all kinds of contacts in digital innovation spaces that perhaps in the past I would not have been able to have deep discussions with.”

The GPS community extends beyond our online classrooms. Students have the opportunity to expand their professional circles and build meaningful connections with our faculty, program chairs, and advisory board members. In addition, our programs are designed to help students balance a graduate education with a full-time job and other professional, academic, or personal commitments.

For more information on the Digital Innovation for FinTech program or other online master’s degrees available at GPS, please visit brandeis.edu/gps.

Sins of our past modeling our future – Diversity and bias in AI and data

March 8, 2020 / memiller / 0 Comments

By Deniz A Johnson

With International Women’s Day approaching, I was recently interviewed regarding the gender gap in Fintech and Financial Services. This is a hot topic with a variety of efforts underway to address it. To name a few:

A recent California law (SB826) mandated diversity in the boardroom.
Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon announced that the investment bank will no longer take a company public unless said company has at least one “diverse” board member.

These are just the most recent examples of current shifts in the industry.

Perhaps the most compelling reason to increase diversity is that it pays! A 2020 KPMG study concluded that “boards that include more women and directors with diverse backgrounds and experiences are more effective on a variety of measures, including financial performance, risk oversight and sustainability.”

While these are steps in the right direction, I believe that diversity in financial data sets is a much larger issue. Without resolving the bias in AI and its data, we cannot make diversity in financial services a sustainable reality.

Every day, we generate data trails as part of our lives as we engage in financial transactions large and small; post on social media; or even just log into a website or app. This data is and will be available for building and refining our Machine Learning (ML) and other Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies.

As these new technologies are adopted to guide business decisions, including creation of new investment products and services, the diversity challenges have a potential to create significant limitations:

When data sets represent only a small percentage of the actual population’s activities, preferences and needs
When past decisions contain identifiable or hidden prejudice/ bias
When past business decisions omit segments of the population

If we do not openly address these problems, we will carry narrow customer insights and potential biases to future products and services, thus missing the opportunities to add greater value to more clients. This could mean; a minority group that has traditionally avoided loan applications can be automatically rejected in the future since the data set is incomplete.

Let’s begin to address this problem by first using ML/AI to identify bias, bad data, and data gaps. Further, let’s leverage community and educational programs to increase workforce diversity and encourage firms to create inclusive work environments – both will make diversity a reality rather a goal – and enable broader thinking about client segments and their diverse needs and preferences.

Diversity and inclusion are not just feel-good concepts, but investments in the future. Both are necessities for creating better data sets for the new technologies that will help us build the financial solutions of the future and our industry’s success.

Taking a mindful and intentional look into identifying and solving bias in data as well as models is the key to making diverse organizations.

Deniz Johnson is a FinTech thought leader, advisor and executive in the Boston area. You can find her on LinkedIn here.

Brandeis Graduate Professional Studies is committed to creating programs and courses that keep today’s professionals at the forefront of their industries. To learn more, visit www.brandeis.edu/gps.

Student Spotlight: Denny Singh

July 25, 2019 / angelaself / 0 Comments

GPS FinTech instructor editorial featured in Boston Business Journal

April 30, 2019 / kaplane / 0 Comments

Sarah Biller Headshot In a recent editorial in the Boston Business Journal, GPS FinTech instructor Sarah Biller discusses Boston fintechs and their unique position to be able to transform the finance industry and solve some of America’s most pressing financial challenges. Biller is co-founder of FinTech Sandbox and founding advisor of MassChallenge FinTech.

Read the full article here, and request more information about studying FinTech at Brandeis here.

FinTech Insights - Brandeis GPS Online Education - Brandeis GPS Blog

Can mono-solution providers survive?

July 25, 2017 / memiller / 0 Comments

By Mike Storiale

When FinTech began its ascent, single-solution providers opened the door to expertise and simplicity rarely brought to the table by traditional banks. Solutions designed to meet unique needs created excitement from consumers and investors alike.

FinTech Revolution - Brandeis GPS Blog - Brandeis GPS online Education

The Financial Technology Revolution

September 28, 2016 / croldan / 0 Comments

By Josh Deems

The saga of finance technology, dubbed “fintech,” is on a delayed start compared to other industries. When the proverbial innovation alarm clock rang around 2004, a digital revolution ignited media,telecom, retail, and other nimble segments into transformation. New ideas, technologies, and companies emerged and became entrenched in our daily lives. In the meantime, financial services hit the snooze button… but why?

Innovation in finance has happened before

In the 1950’s, the invention of the credit card was thought to render physical cash obsolete. By the 1960’s, ATMs appeared, threatening the existence of live tellers and bank branches. Starting in the 1970s, stock brokers ditched phone and paper based trades for electronic systems. From 1998 on, consumers and retailers began transacting for goods and services through linked-bank accounts via the online payments system, PayPal.

Major advancements in banking technology have happened every decade since the end of the Second World War, but none harnessing the disruptive power of the revolution we’re facing today.

Why now?

Fast forward to 2008. New banking services materialized again, this time driven by the millennial thirst for digitization, the anti-establishment distrust of arcane banking processes, and the chutzpah of start-
ups and investors. Concepts such as peer-to-peer lending, digital wealth management, and the first fully electronic currency, Bitcoin, became the focal point of innovation. The theme shifted to the ‘unbundling’ of core banking services often thought as too large, too complex, and too regulated to face disruption.

<<Learn more about the MS in Digital Innovation for FinTech at Brandeis>>

Overview of new services

Highlighted below are two of the more prominent technologies involved in the paradigm shift of the banking industry. Blockchain, the distributed ledger technology and buzzword associated with Bitcoin, and robo-advisors, or digital wealth platforms changing the way we manage personal portfolios.

Blockchain

What is it? Distributed, immutable, and fully secure database technology. Underlying engine of bitcoin, and supporting technology for peer-to-peer payments worldwide.
Key Players Open source blockchain providers (Ethereum, Hyperledger); enterprise blockchain companies (Chain, itBit, Symbiont); financial services consortium (R3, Post Trade Distributed Ledger Group); global payments (Ripple); bitcoin-enabled services (Coinbase, Bitfinex)
Potential Impact
- Send payments across the globe in seconds (remember Western Union, anyone?)
- Tokenize and track the movement of assets across the world’s financial markets
- Shared ledgers and asset records across regulators, buy-side, sell-side, and custodians
- Immutable history of every financial institution’s transactions
- Digitization of fiat currency (Bank of England is experimenting with this)
- Automated compliance and settlement processes

Robo-Advisors

What is it? Umbrella term for digital wealth management advice. Covers anything from fully-automated and algorithm-based portfolio generation to digital client engagement tools used by human wealth advisors.
Key Players Institutional (Schwab, Fidelity, Vanguard, BlackRock); Standalone Robo’s (Betterment, Wealthfront, SigFig, LearnVest)
Potential Impact
- For consumers, cheaper investment advice, diversified portfolio with lower fees through ETF-based offerings, access to features (tax-loss harvesting and portfolio rebalancing) formerly only offered by professional managers to high net worth individuals
- For advisors, broaden scope of managed portfolios beyond high net worth individuals and increase AUM, especially by engaging and targeting millennials. Enhanced market analytics and insights to provide clients.

How to stay ahead

From behemoth banks to lean start-ups, the appetite for seasoned bankers, savvy coders, and entrepreneurial-minded individuals who can bridge the tech and finance gaps is growing. According to LinkedIn data from September 16, 2016, there are over 450 fintech job recommendations between New York, San Francisco, and Boston, and over 650 in London. And these figures ignore the opportunities unlocked by starting your own fintech.

If you’re interested in learning more, a great place to start is the MS in Science for Digital Innovation offered by Brandeis University. The program condenses the fintech ecosystem, and blends the finance and technology skillsets required to build your own personal fintech toolkit. And the secret sauce? The program is taught by experienced professionals who are engaged in the academic, finance, and technology communities.

The finance digital revolution is upon us, and our economy is becoming increasingly mobile and on-demand. Become an active participant in the movement and take the opportunity to learn new topics, network with like-minded individuals, and explore how companies are changing the way banking is conducted worldwide. Soon, you will become the face of the fintech revolution as well.

Josh Deems is an AVP and business strategist at State Street Corporation’s Emerging Technologies Center. Prior to joining State Street, Josh was a management consultant, focusing on operating model improvement and digital experience for asset managers. Josh holds a Bachelors of Business Administration from the George Washington University with a concentration in finance.

Josh Deems

Study the evolution of FinTech online at Brandeis

August 25, 2016 / croldan / 0 Comments

Did you know that Brandeis GPS offers courses for professional development? Enroll in an online course this fall and network with new colleagues in a 10-week, seminar-style online classroom capped at 20 students. Registration is now open and we’re celebrating by profiling our favorite fall courses.

Get an introduction to the evolution of the financial industry landscape, the challenges and opportunities presented in today’s new era, and the drivers behind industry changes. With this 10-week, graduate-level course, you’ll analyze case studies of well-known FinTech companies and discuss leading business models, technology and trends. Topics will include:

The History of FinTech: from Mesopotamia to today
The digitization of banking
Big Data: structured and unstructured
Cryptocurrency, Blockchain and digital ledgers
Quantitative trading

Fall courses run Sept. 14-Nov. 22. Whether you’re looking to complete a full degree or advance your career through professional development, this course is designed to equip you with the necessary skills for making an impact in any industry or organization.

How it works:
Take a part-time, online course this fall without enrolling in one of our graduate programs. If you like what you learn and want to continue your education, you can apply your credits from this fall toward a future degree. Questions? Contact our enrollment team at gps@brandeis.edu or 781-736-8787 or fill out our first-time registration form and we’ll be in touch.

Thought Leadership Webinar Recording: Learning from FinTech Startups

August 8, 2016 / memiller / 0 Comments

July’s thought leadership webinar was led by Timothy Bosco, Senior Vice President of Investor Services at Brown Brothers Harriman.

Read more FinTech insights from Bosco here.

Access other GPS thought leadership webinars here.

What Established Companies Can Really Learn From Startups

July 11, 2016 / memiller / 0 Comments

The following blog post was written by Timothy Bosco, Senior Vice President of Investor Services at Brown Brothers Harriman. Tim will be hosting a webinar on this topic on Thursday, July 28 at 2 p.m. EDT (rsvp here).

Today, some of the most successful financial service providers are seeking lessons about risk taking from an unlikely source – early stage startup companies.

Whether it’s through the venture investment community or directly with leading fintechs, more and more established companies are looking to model startup behaviors despite the fact that these emerging companies actually fail more than 90% of the time.¹

Learn more about the newest GPS master’s degree

It is easy to assume this growing trend must be because the fast-paced, innovative startup culture inspires established companies to take bigger chances in search of bigger rewards. The real reason for this new fascination, however, is often just the opposite. It might actually be the way startups deal with uncertainty and efficiently mitigate their risk of failure that is driving the real interest.

Clearly, the “eat-or-be-eaten” environment in which most startups operate has a way of forcing efficiency and creativity. When something is not working to plan, only those with the willingness and the ingenuity to shift fast enough have a chance of making it.

It’s that dexterity large organizations envy most. In fact, there probably isn’t a corporate innovation team out there that hasn’t, at some point, incorporated the “fail fast” mantra into their lexicon.

Large companies also recognize that many of the same factors that threaten a startup’s success can impact their own product strategies to the same degree – technology can evolve overnight, customer preferences are fickle, funding is always limited, and new competition can spring up from anywhere at any time.

The difference for startups, though, is that they have the most to lose by ignoring signals to fail fast. In most cases, it is their survival instincts that draw out the entrepreneurial resiliency needed to bootstrap success even if that means setting aside their original ambitions.

Pinterest is one of many great examples of a startup that was forced to abandon its initial plan only to architect an even bigger opportunity. In 2009, the founders of Pinterest initially attempted to launch the very first mobile-enabled shopping application called Tote. Despite strong customer demand, retailer support, and adequate seed funding, the idea never took off because of the relative immaturity of mobile payment technologies. Instead of doubling down and waiting for payment technologies catch up, Tote switched gears and relaunched a much simpler application that kick started a new visual social network phenomenon. It turns out that Pinterest is among the most likely IPO candidates in 2016 with an anticipated $11 billion valuation.²

While large companies can’t necessarily manufacture the competitive environments that shape actual startup behaviors, there is still a lot they can learn from successful entrepreneurs about staying lean, focused, and in control of new product innovation. The following table outlines a few key success factors commonly found among startups that reinvented themselves early in their lifecycles.

Adopting Successful Startup Strategies

What Established Companies Figure 1

Within the corporate context, these startup strategies also suggest an ideal investment profile for mitigating risk. The minimum and maximum ranges depicted below illustrate the relative levels of investment in terms of both time and money throughout the product development cycle.

Creating the Right New Product Investment Profile

What Established Companies Figure 2
It clearly takes both practical decision making and an unconditional commitment to make it big as a startup. The people who run them are responsible for every detail, every success, and every failure. It is that entrepreneurial perspective that guides startups to fail fast. For that reason, established companies must understand the importance of empowering their product teams to own their decisions about how to incorporate failure before it gets expensive or even worse… before it becomes destructive.

¹Forbes, 90% of Startups Fail: Here’s What You Need to Know About the 10%, January 2015.

²Nasdaq, Is Pinterest a Top IPO Candidate for 2016?, December 2015.

This blog post was originally published on Brown Brothers Harriman’s Insights blog on May 6, 2016. RSVP to Tim’s webinar, What Can Established Companies Really Learn from FinTech Startups, here.

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