SKEMA FinTech Initiative:
The recent technological developments have led to a series of transformative innovations in the area of financial services. This digitalization of financial services entails both risk and opportunities, not only for the financial sector but also for the society as whole. To better understand the impact and reach of this digital transformation, SKEMA Business School created the FinTech Initiative. This group is led by Armin Schwienbacher and concentrates its focus on three distinct areas:
- New financing methods for startups
Technology is transforming the way entrepreneurial startups get financed. These trends include the emergence of crowdfunding and initial coin offerings (ICOs) as new disintermediated sources of entrepreneurial finance.
- Blockchain technology
The blockchain technology constitutes the foundation for a whole new chapter of financial services. The distributed nature of the underlying technology provides new answer to trust in a decentralized world and simultaneously raises a series of new challenges regarding regulation, financial stability, anonymity, and security.
- Entrepreneurial opportunities
The digital transformation also sparks the emergence of new industrial platforms and digital infrastructures which use alternative data and improved methods (e.g., AI, machine learning) to exploit new business opportunities in the finance landscape.
SKEMA’s FinTech initiative investigates this new frontier between the fields of technology and financial services, including how digital transformation affects the stability of financial markets, creates and enables entrepreneurial initiatives, all of which requires new responses from regulators to protect investors and market participants.
