FinTech

How the global financial system is structured — central banks, commercial banks, the interbank market, the SWIFT network, and the mechanics of how money moves between institutions and across borders. Students develop a clear understanding of the system that FinTech is disrupting.

A comprehensive map of the FinTech landscape: payments, lending, wealthtech, insurtech, regtech, and blockchain. Students analyse the business models, regulatory challenges, and competitive dynamics of leading FinTech companies from Africa, Europe, Asia, and the Americas.

Time value of money, compound interest, present value and future value calculations, basic probability, and the mathematical intuition required to understand financial products and risk. Taught using Python for automation of financial calculations.

The mechanics of Bitcoin and Ethereum — proof of work versus proof of stake, public and private keys, wallets, transactions, and block structure. Market dynamics of crypto assets, stablecoins, CBDCs, and the regulatory treatment of digital assets globally.

Card networks, payment gateways, payment processors, mobile money (M-Pesa, Pix, UPI), buy-now-pay-later, and open banking. Students trace a single payment transaction from initiation to settlement and identify every participant and system involved.

The regulatory frameworks governing financial services: PSD2, MiFID II, GDPR as applied to financial data, AML, KYC, and the FCA sandbox model. Students evaluate how regulation simultaneously accelerates and constrains FinTech innovation.

Robo-advisors, personal finance management apps, micro-investment platforms, and the democratisation of financial advice. Students evaluate the user experience, business model, and regulatory status of three leading wealthtech products.

A specialist module on African financial infrastructure — mobile money from M-Pesa through to Flutterwave and Paystack, financial inclusion data, remittance corridors, and the regulatory environments governing FinTech in Nigeria, Kenya, and South Africa.

Deep technical understanding of blockchain data structures, Merkle trees, consensus algorithms (PoW, PoS, DPoS, PBFT), network topology, and the trade-offs between different blockchain architectures for financial applications.

Writing, testing, and deploying Ethereum smart contracts in Solidity. Students build contracts for token issuance (ERC-20), non-fungible tokens (ERC-721), decentralised escrow, and automated payment splitting — with full test suites and security reviews.

The architecture of DeFi protocols: automated market makers, lending protocols, yield farming, liquidity provision, and the systemic risks of protocol interdependency. Students interact with live DeFi protocols on Ethereum testnets.

How a modern neobank is built — core banking systems, API-first architecture, microservices, Banking as a Service providers, and the integration of third-party financial services. Students design the technical architecture of a hypothetical neobank.

Building data pipelines for financial applications: ingesting market data from APIs, storing and querying time-series financial data, building dashboards, and applying basic anomaly detection to transactional data streams.

PSD2 open banking in practice: connecting to bank APIs, OAuth2 authentication, PISP and AISP roles, and building applications on top of open banking infrastructure. Students build a working open banking application.

The specific threat landscape facing financial institutions — phishing, business email compromise, man-in-the-middle attacks, and insider threats. Security controls mandated by financial regulators and the technical implementation of fraud detection systems.

Applying UX principles to financial product design — financial literacy considerations, trust signals, onboarding flow design, and the accessibility requirements of financial applications. Students wireframe and user-test a FinTech product concept.

Building automated trading strategies: technical analysis, momentum strategies, mean reversion, pairs trading, and backtesting using Python. Risk management, position sizing, and the Sharpe ratio as a performance benchmark.

Credit scoring models, fraud detection using anomaly detection algorithms, churn prediction for financial services, and algorithmic underwriting. Students apply supervised and unsupervised ML methods to real financial datasets.

The mechanics of money laundering, terrorist financing, and sanctions evasion — and the technology used to detect them. Transaction monitoring systems, suspicious activity reporting, and the application of graph analytics to financial crime investigation.

The emerging field of tokenising bonds, equities, real estate, and commodities on blockchain infrastructure. Legal frameworks, custody solutions, liquidity considerations, and the potential of tokenisation to democratise access to institutional asset classes.

W3C Verifiable Credentials, Decentralised Identifiers, and the application of self-sovereign identity to KYC processes, cross-border credential verification, and the elimination of document fraud in financial onboarding.

The global CBDC landscape — retail versus wholesale CBDCs, two-tier distribution models, privacy implications, programmable money, and the geopolitical dimensions of digital currency competition. Students evaluate three CBDC pilot programmes.

How FinTech companies are funded — seed, Series A through D, and IPO. Investor thesis evaluation, term sheet analysis, cap table management, and the metrics VCs use to evaluate FinTech investment opportunities. Students present a VC-style investment memo.

Comparative regulatory analysis across the UK FCA, EU Commission, MAS (Singapore), SEC (USA), and CBN (Nigeria). Students design a multi-jurisdictional compliance framework for a FinTech company expanding from Africa to Europe.

How FinTech companies move from product-market fit to sustainable scale — unit economics, cohort analysis, regulatory expansion strategy, and the specific operational challenges of financial services at scale. Students design a FinTech scaling roadmap.

APIs, white-label banking infrastructure, and the trend of non-financial companies offering financial products. Students design an embedded finance product for a non-financial brand and map the BaaS provider landscape.

ISO 20022, real-time gross settlement systems, correspondent banking reform, and the long-term trajectory of cross-border payments. Students analyse the competitive dynamics between traditional correspondent banking, stablecoins, and CBDCs as payment rails.

Green finance taxonomy, ESG data providers, climate risk modelling, and the technology platforms enabling sustainable investment. Students evaluate the ESG data infrastructure of a major asset manager.

How FinTech companies build partnerships with banks, retailers, telecoms, and governments. API marketplace strategy, partnership negotiation, and the design of ecosystem business models that create durable competitive advantage.

Presenting complex FinTech concepts to boards, regulators, and non-technical stakeholders. Data visualisation for financial audiences, regulatory submission writing, and investor relations communication at senior level.

An original research project investigating an emerging FinTech technology or market — from literature review and primary research through to a publishable-standard paper and conference-style oral presentation.

Academic writing at postgraduate standard, research proposal design, and personal statement development for postgraduate finance and technology programmes. Students complete a full university application as part of this module.