The course "Digitalization in Finance" proceeds from the current state of retail financial services (with focus on retail banking) in Europe and the US and the key technological trends that hold the promise of massively changing the industry. The course will extrapolate these trends to arrive at possible future scenarios for the industry in which smart data, machine learning, comprehensive individual risk management and macro markets will play a decisive role. The course will also elaborate on how established industry players should adapt their current business models and possibly cooperate with new players in order to thrive in these future scenarios. The perspective will be mainly from the angle of retail clients and their behavioral patterns. This will allow to use insights from behavioral finance and discuss the social value of finance in a digital world.
The teaching format will be a blend of lectures, case studies, expert guest speeches and class discussions. The literature for the course comprises of recent research papers, industry studies and books from neighboring fields such as behavioral finance, computer science, banking and idea generation and verification.