The FinTech CTO Program – Industry Talks Tech (2024)

Module 1: A Technologists Introduction to Banking Financial Services

Gain a clear understanding of the industry’s current state and key players through an overview of the landscape. Dive deeper into the diverse segments of the financial services market, uncovering their unique needs and characteristics. This module goes beyond, offering a comprehensive exploration of the industry’s structure, challenges, and opportunities. Uncover the disruptive potential of Open Banking and Banking-as-a-Service, examining their impact on traditional models. Finally, gain strategic insights into the transformative power of cloud computing, big data, and artificial intelligence within the financial sector. By engaging with this insightful module, you’ll acquire the knowledge and perspective to navigate the ever-evolving landscape of technology in banking and finance.

Module 2: Introduction to the Segments of Banking

This module offers a nuanced exploration of the IT landscape within various banking segments. Begin by dissecting the unique Key IT Concerns faced by each segment, gaining a holistic understanding of their pain points and priorities. Then, we delve into specific areas like Retail Banking’s IT Focus Areas, examining their critical technology needs and solutions. Expand your knowledge by understanding the complex dynamics and regulations at play in Capital Markets. Next, examine Payment Systems, exploring their evolving trends and underlying mechanics. Gain valuable insights into Wealth and Asset Management (WAM), followed by strategic perspectives on Investment Management. Stay ahead of the curve by understanding Innovations in Financial Technology (FinTech) and how they are disrupting the industry. We then identify consistent themes across diverse Banking Segments, recognizing common challenges and shared opportunities. Master the essentials of Governance, Risk, and Compliance (GRC), ensuring you understand the regulatory framework and best practices. Navigate the complexities of Banking Risk Management, exploring different types of risks and mitigation strategies. Finally, demystify Anti-Money Laundering (AML) regulations and practices, equipping yourself with the knowledge to combat financial crime. By completing this module, you’ll gain a comprehensive understanding of IT challenges and opportunities within various banking segments, empowering you to make informed decisions and contribute to the industry’s future success.

Module 3: Capital Markets Business and Architecture Patterns

Capital markets are crucial components of the financial system that facilitate the buying and selling of financial securities, such as stocks, bonds, derivatives, and commodities. These markets provide a platform for businesses, governments, and individuals to raise capital, invest, and manage financial risks. Module 3 immerses you into the world of Capital Markets. We demystify its business and architecture patterns, explore its dynamics, and delve into key participants like stock exchanges. Uncover the crucial role of data, regulations, and risk management practices in ensuring market stability. Discover strategies for revenue growth, customer-centric approaches, and data monetization potential. Explore the transformative power of digital transformation, grid computing, and shared service platforms, gaining insights into their impact on modern capital markets architecture. By completing this module, you’ll possess a comprehensive understanding of this complex ecosystem, equipping you to navigate its opportunities and challenges with confidence.

Module 4: Payment Systems Business and Architecture Patterns

Module 4 introduces you to the dynamic world of the payments industry. Gain a solid foundation with an overview of its business, technology, and architecture, followed by an engaging industry discussion. Delve into the intricacies of payment system models and understand the core functions and flow of various systems. Stay ahead of the curve with insightful discussions on instant payments and upcoming trends shaping the industry in 2024. Unlock the value within your data by exploring monetization strategies and navigating the GRC landscape specific to the payments industry. Gain a comprehensive understanding of the technological landscape and discover best practices for marketing and CRM within this competitive environment. Master data management with insights into building a payments industry data warehousing platform and driving digital transformation through innovative IT solutions. Conclude by exploring modern payment architectures, including their end-to-end elements and credit card analytics roadmaps. By completing this module, you’ll possess the knowledge and expertise to thrive in the ever-evolving payments landscape.

Module 5: Wealth Management Business and Architecture Patterns

Module 6: Retail Banking Business and Architecture Patterns

Module 6 dives deep into the heart of retail banking, equipping you with a comprehensive understanding of its services, functions, and technology landscape. Begin by exploring the industry and key offerings before delving into core functions and products. Navigate the ever-changing ecosystem through discussions on branch systems, call centers, ATM networks, and online banking functionalities, visualizing key concepts with insightful infographics. Gain valuable insights into the evolving retail banking data landscape and grasp the significance of mortgage banking applications through another dedicated infographic. Master marketing and customer engagement strategies with an overview of marketing systems functionalities and delve into the critical role of financing and accounting applications. Unpack the complexities of existing systems within retail banking and engage in stimulating discussions about the necessity and challenges of IT transformation within this dynamic setting. Conclude by exploring next-generation solutions with insights into “Customer 360” approaches, cloud transformation architectures, and practical discussions on retail bank cloud adoption strategies. By completing this module, you’ll possess the knowledge and vision to navigate the evolving retail banking landscape, contributing to success in an increasingly digital and customer-centric era.

Module 7 Open Banking Standard Business and Architecture Patterns

Module 7 unlocks the transformative potential of Open Banking and its impact on finance. Kick off with an introductory exploration, then delve into the critical role of national regulations in shaping this revolutionary landscape. Engage in a thought-provoking discourse on the core principles and implications of Open Banking, uncovering its potential to disrupt traditional paradigms. Discover how banks can unlock new revenue streams with key Open Banking use cases, learning from pioneering institutions like Standard Chartered. Dive deeper into the technical aspects by exploring the construction of an Open Banking platform, architecting the technology stack for financial services, and harnessing the power of data lakes within this ecosystem. Module 7 concludes with a detailed analysis of an Open Banking reference architecture, equipping you with the technical knowledge and strategic insights to navigate this rapidly evolving world. By completing this module, you’ll be poised to contribute to the future of finance, empowered to leverage Open Banking for innovation and competitive advantage.

Module 8: Risk Tech Business and Architecture Patterns in Banking

Module 8 delves into the crucial domain of Risk in Banking, equipping you with the knowledge and tools to navigate this complex landscape. Begin with a foundational understanding of banking risk management before taking a deeper dive into financial and banking-specific risks. Demystify Basel III regulations and their impact on the industry, then hone your skills in identifying and measuring credit risk, gaining insights into industry practices for effective management. Explore beyond credit, understanding additional risks faced by banks and delve into the complexities of market risk capital under Basel 2.5 and FRTB regulations. Master market risk measurement techniques and explore strategies for liquidity risk management, overcoming data challenges encountered in RDARR. Join in an engaging discussion on banking risk management and learn about the transformative role of the RDARR project. To conclude, analyze the high-level data architecture and gain practical insights into risk pipelines used within banking institutions. By completing this module, you’ll gain a comprehensive grasp of risk management essential for thriving in the ever-changing financial landscape.

Module 9: Anti Money Laundering in Banking Business and Architecture Patterns

Module 9 plunges you into the critical realm of Financial Crime and Anti-Money Laundering (AML) in banking. Gain a firm understanding of current threats and trends before exploring the ever-evolving landscape of AML technology trends and system setups. Discover how data analysis has revolutionized AML practices, uncovering challenges in traditional software and the potential of Machine Learning for enhanced detection. Delve deeper into innovative approaches to combatting financial crime, exploring changes in AML applications and illustrative use cases. Learn how leveraging data lakes empowers modern AML platforms and equip yourself with the insights of a modern AML reference architecture. To conclude, the module guides you through industry best practices, ensuring you’re equipped to contribute to a safer and more secure financial ecosystem. By completing this module, you’ll gain the knowledge and expertise to effectively combat financial crime, protecting financial institutions and fostering a more ethical financial landscape.

Module 10: Fraud Detection Business and Architecture Patterns

Module 10 equips you to combat the ever-evolving threat of financial fraud. Start by understanding the diverse types and current trends, then explore how efforts in AML, fraud, and cybercrime platforms intersect to create a holistic defense. Delve into legacy fraud detection platforms, analyzing their workflows and limitations. Enhance your knowledge with discussions on data management in fraud detection, learning from a detailed case study. Master the power of data analytics by gaining insights into network analytics and their application in fraud detection. Discover key strategies for prevention and explore diverse use cases in detail. Uncover the power of geolocation data for risk assessment and equip yourself with the technical knowledge of fraud detection platform reference architectures and bank-specific fraud detection platform architectures. By completing this module, you’ll become a valuable asset in safeguarding financial institutions and customers from the ever-present dangers of financial fraud.

Module 11: Mainframe Modernization in Banking

Module 11 plunges you into the heart of the financial ecosystem: core banking systems (CBS). Gain a solid understanding of their fundamental purpose and structure, then explore the dynamic landscape of evolving trends shaping this critical technology. Delve into the complexities of transforming core banking in both traditional and modern financial institutions, equipped with insights into optimizing efficiency and agility. Discover how modernizing banks with next-generation core banking platforms can unlock significant strategic advantages. Equip yourself with a core banking modernization reference architecture, gaining practical guidance for navigating this transformative journey. To conclude, the module imparts essential best practices for maintaining a robust and future-proof core banking system. By completing this module, you’ll possess the knowledge and strategic vision to contribute to the successful evolution of core banking systems, positioning your institution for sustainable growth in the ever-changing financial landscape.

Module 12: FinTech Business and Architecture Patterns

Module 12 unveils the transformative world of FinTech, equipping you to understand its impact on the financial landscape. Gain a solid foundation with an introduction to core principles and delve into the key differences between FinTech and traditional banks. Explore diverse FinTech segments, uncovering their unique offerings and disruptive potential. Learn how digital banks are redefining customer experiences and gain insights into FinTech’s role in revolutionizing remittance services. Demystify emerging technologies like blockchain and cryptocurrency, understanding their potential to reshape financial structures. Discover how mortgage tech and cloud enablement are driving FinTech innovation, unlocking agility and scalability. Master the significance of machine learning, blockchain, and predictive analytics in developing cutting-edge FinTech solutions. Explore the power of open APIs and delve into reference architectures for FinTech and payment technologies. Gain practical guidance on building a successful FinTech platform and designing a minimum viable product (MVP) with key capabilities. By completing this module, you’ll possess the knowledge and vision to navigate the dynamic FinTech ecosystem, contributing to innovation and shaping the future of finance.

Module 13: Mainframe Modernzation Demo

In today’s fast-paced digital landscape, mainframe modernization has become a crucial imperative for organizations aiming to stay competitive and agile. The traditional mainframe infrastructure, while robust, often struggles to keep up with the demands of modern business environments characterized by cloud computing, big data analytics, and the need for real-time processing. The process of mainframe modernization involves updating and migrating legacy applications to more contemporary architectures, embracing technologies like microservices, containerization, and cloud-native solutions. This not only enhances system flexibility and scalability but also facilitates a seamless integration with emerging technologies, ensuring that businesses can leverage their existing investments while staying at the forefront of innovation. This was exemplified by our demonstration of a mainframe modernization utilizing Amazon Mainframe Modernization technology in a practical manner. Our demo showcases migration, discovery, modernization, augmentation, test creation and more mainframe modernization use cases.

Module 14: Credit Card Fraud Detection Demo

Credit card fraud poses a persistent challenge in today’s digital era, where online transactions and electronic payments have become the norm. It involves unauthorized access to credit card information, leading to unauthorized purchases or withdrawals. Cybercriminals employ various tactics, including phishing, skimming, and hacking, to gain access to sensitive card data. As technology evolves, so do the methods of fraud, making it crucial for individuals and businesses to stay vigilant. To combat this, credit card companies and financial institutions continually invest in advanced security measures, such as encryption and biometric authentication, to protect users and maintain trust in the financial ecosystem. Staying informed about common fraud schemes and regularly monitoring credit card statements are vital steps for individuals to mitigate the risks associated with credit card fraud in today’s interconnected world. These risks were highlighted during the demonstration portion of this module’s presentation. By leveraging cutting edge machine learning techniques, we showcase the powerful predictive capabilities of modern algorithms with the use of real historical credit card transaction data. Through the usage of both unsupervised and supervised machine learning, we trained and deployed models that can be reconfigured for a variety of test cases.

Module 15: Retail Banking Demo

Retail banking is the familiar face of everyday financial transactions, connecting individuals and small businesses with essential banking services. It encompasses a wide range of activities, from basic savings and checking accounts to loans, mortgages, and credit cards. In essence, it’s the bank you visit on Main Street for your everyday banking needs. Retail banks play a crucial role in providing financial accessibility to the broader population, offering a variety of products and services tailored to meet the diverse needs of their customers. With the advent of online banking, the landscape has evolved, allowing customers to manage their finances conveniently from the comfort of their homes. This is all highlighted in the retail banking module in our course. We examine a wide range of topics like modern trends within the industry, non-traditional data applications, modern uses of data science in the industry and more.

Module 16: Roboadvisory Demo

Robo advisors are akin to the tech-savvy financial advisors of the digital age, bringing an automated and algorithm-driven approach to investment management. These virtual financial guides use algorithms to analyze your financial goals, risk tolerance, and market trends to recommend a diversified portfolio. It’s like having a personal finance assistant that operates 24/7 without the need for human intervention. Robo advisors have gained popularity for their accessibility, low fees, and the ability to cater to both novice and experienced investors. While they might lack the human touch of traditional advisors, they bring efficiency and cost-effectiveness to the world of investment, making it easier for individuals to navigate the complexities of the financial markets. The demonstration we showcase for this module in the course showcases some of the modern functionalities of a roboadvisor. This includes providing investment advice dependent on the level of risk inputted by the user, providing additional investment resources for the user to utilize and more.

Module 17: Risk Data Aggregation Demo

In the realm of loan approval, diving into risk data is like peeling back the layers of a financial onion. It involves scrutinizing all sorts of factors – from credit scores and payment histories to debt-to-income ratios and the overall economic landscape. This data deluge helps lenders gauge the potential risks associated with lending money. Essentially, it’s the nitty-gritty details that paint a picture of a borrower’s financial health and ability to handle the loan responsibly. By analyzing this risk data, lenders can make more informed decisions on whether to green-light a loan or not. It’s like a financial crystal ball, offering insights into the potential bumps in the road and helping lenders steer clear of shaky financial ground when giving the nod to loan applications. These loan applications were the focus of the demo we showcased for this module. By using over 30,000 real-life historical loan applications, we were able to train a supervised machine learning model on loan approval or denial prediction and, in doing so, were able to accurately predict the sheer majority of loan decisions made by the banks themselves. This, like many other demos featured in this course, has the potential to be reconfigured for alternative test cases.

Module 18: FinTech Demo

Fintech apps serve as sophisticated tools in the domain of personal finance, leveraging advanced technological frameworks to deliver a comprehensive suite of financial services. These applications seamlessly integrate algorithms and data analytics to streamline functions such as budgeting, investing, and transaction processing. With intuitive interfaces, fintech apps provide users with real-time financial insights, enhancing decision-making processes. Their technological prowess extends to areas like artificial intelligence, machine learning, and blockchain, enabling secure and efficient financial operations. In essence, these apps represent a paradigm shift, employing cutting-edge technologies to empower users with a granular and analytical approach to managing their financial portfolios and transactions. For this module, we featured a demo that showcased exactly how to build and deploy your own Fintech application from scratch. This Fintech application interacted with the PLAID API to allow users to access their bank account information from the application itself. This demo served to showcase exactly how to link customer bank accounts into an application that can then use this information in the same way modern Fintech applications do.

Module 19: AML in Banking Demo

Module 20: Trading Platforms Demo

Trading platforms are akin to the bustling marketplaces of the digital age, connecting investors to the pulse of financial markets. They’re the virtual playground for buying and selling stocks, cryptocurrencies, and various financial instruments. With sleek interfaces and real-time data streams, these platforms empower users to make informed decisions and execute trades with just a few clicks. Whether for use by a seasoned trader or an amateur testing the waters, trading platforms offer a user-friendly space to navigate the complexities of the financial world. It’s where numbers meet user experience, creating a dynamic space where individuals can actively participate in the excitement and challenges of the global markets. We touch on all of this and much more in our course’s Trading platform module. We examine modern and historical trends within the industry as well as taking a look at the next generation of capital markets through the lens of emerging technology.

Module 21: GenAI in Banking Demo

Generative AI represents a cutting-edge model in artificial intelligence, characterized by algorithms capable of autonomously producing novel and coherent outputs across various domains. Leveraging advanced neural network architectures, such as recurrent and transformer models, generative AI systems learn intricate patterns and structures from vast datasets. These systems, often powered by deep learning techniques, demonstrate the ability to generate authentic text, images, and even multimedia content that closely resembles human-created outputs. The technical sophistication lies in the nuanced understanding of contextual relationships, semantic coherence, and the creative synthesis of information, positioning generative AI at the forefront of pushing the boundaries of machine-generated content. For this module we showcased a demo that allows you to build your own chatbot that uses the large language model that is ChatGPT. This model can be trained on data uploaded by the user and can be made to create custom responses for a variety of applications. Through this customers can build their own chatbots for use by their own company as a way of assisting customers and more.

Module 22: Cloud Computing in Banking

Cloud computing operates as a dynamic paradigm in computing infrastructure, offering virtualized resources and services over the internet. It involves the provision of on-demand access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources, such as servers, storage, and applications, without requiring direct management by the user. The technology facilitates a scalable and flexible model, allowing users to scale resources up or down based on demand. From a technical standpoint, cloud computing employs virtualization, distributed computing, and networking protocols to efficiently allocate and manage resources across a vast network of interconnected servers. In essence, it transforms the traditional approach to computing, providing a decentralized, highly accessible, and adaptive framework for hosting and delivering a diverse range of applications and data. We delve much deeper into the topic of cloud computing within our dedicated cloud computing module for this course. This includes modern use cases, historical trends, pros and cons, and more.