From a managerial perspective, the financial sector is moving from being stable, conservative, closed, and local to being disrupted by new entrants and internet giants with very different industry dynamics and risk profile. Fundamentally, this requires a complete rethinking of governance, strategic risk, and compliance (GRC) issues. The intention is to give participants a strong, skill based, value driven, and ethical foundation for their careers.
This course is a part of the new specialization in Governance, Risk Management and Compliance. The course can be taken separately, as a single course, or in combination with the two other courses constituting the GRC specialization. It is possible to integrate the specialization or the course within the full master degree in Business Development (MBD).The GRC specialization consists of three courses:
Risk Management and Compliance
Governance, Sustainability and Ethics
Digitalization of Finance
Purpose and description of the course
Digital technologies are fundamentally transforming the ways in which organizations create value from business activities, processes, products, and services. The financial sector is no exception, actually it is one of the most digitalized industries. Interestingly, the financial sector was one of the most stable and conservative industries, but is now facing dramatic changes. This course focuses on the new digital reality that the financial industry faces, including the thousands of FinTech startups that are challenging the stability of the industry, the Internet giants like Apple, Google, Amazon, and Alibaba that are rushing to claim a piece of the pie, the new technologies that fundamentally transform banking processes, and the regulatory changes that force the industry to open up. All these changes must be understood to ensure a prosperous and healthy financial sector.
This course will focus on the ways in which digital technologies are changing the rules of competition in finance. Instead of competing on scale and fortified business positions, competition is turning to speed and novelty of digital innovations. Instead of competing only as individual firms, companies compete in ecosystems and through digital platforms. So, in this course we cover how digitalization transforms the rules of competition. We will discuss the role of FinTech that carries this transformation, and how companies in the financial service must develop the means to compete on digital innovation. Furthermore, this course will also revisit the basics of financial industries, namely money and payments.
Key themes in the course
- Digital innovation
- Fintech
- Competition
- Money and payments
Your learning outcome
- Identify and explain opportunities and challenges of digitalization of finance for your own organization or a new venture.
- Demonstrate how course concepts, frameworks, and theories can be used for analyzing the opportunities and challenges of digitalization of finance.
- Reflect upon the theoretical and practical implications of the analyses.