Financial technology, or fintech, has long been regarded by financial institutions as the major source of disruption in their industry. Surprisingly, however, a large number of institutions still have no reliable fintech strategy to deal with the existing and expected disruptions.
With ambitions of supplying fintech leadership beyond Hong Kong to mainland China and the international job market, local universities are launching several postgraduate courses in fintech in 2019 for people working in finance, technology, regulation or fintech itself.
Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) has been designing a postgraduate programme for the best part of 2018, to be launched during the next academic year.
Combining the university’s main strengths, the one-year fulltime master of science in financial technology (MScFinTech) is jointly offered by HKUST’s schools of business management, engineering and science.
“The three schools are in synergy, with the directorship rotating between them every two years to avoid silos. Each school contributes courses,” explains professor Tam Kar-yan, dean of the school of business and management. He adds, “We work closely with industry, and talk to banks, asset management firms and regulators. That is why it took us [so long].”
