EVENT BRIEFINGS

RMI’s Director Prof. Steven Kou Gives a Talk on a Theory of Fintech

Prof. Steven Kou, RMI’s Director and Class of ’62 Professor of Mathematics at NUS gave a talk on “A Theory of Fintech” on 30 August 2017 at RMI. This talk was attended by an audience of over 70 participants from industry and academia as well as students studying in the fields of quantitative finance and mathematics.

In this talk, Prof. Kou gave a brief overview of the current academic research on fintech by using tools from operations research, and covered five topics, all based on his current working papers:

1. Data privacy preservation: how to do statistical inference, based on the encrypted data while still preserving privacy.
2. P2P equity financing: how to design contracts suitable for a P2P equity financing platform with information asymmetry.
3. Robotic financial advising: how to get investor’s risk aversion parameters automatically by asking simple questions, and how to get consistent answers to meet goals of investors, such as retirement planning.
4. High frequency regulation: whether the current US regulation of prohibition of trade-through between exchanges is beneficial or not.
5. Economics of bitcoin: how to build a general equilibrium model for bitcoin.

Led by Prof. Kou, RMI has been focusing on academic research in recent years. In 2016, RMI researchers have published a total of 13 papers in top tier-1 research journals including Operations Research and Management Science.

Senior Banker Talks to RMI's Master of Science in Financial Engineering (MFE) Students

On 22 September 2017, RMI invited Lionel Xavier, Global Head of Capital and Liquidity Management at Standard Chartered Bank, to talk to its students about “New Trends for Quantitative Finance in Banking – Broader Prospects for MFE Students.” He firstly gave the students an insight into the banking environment post the financial crisis by introducing the new competitive dynamic and regulatory landscape. He noted that the importance of risk management has risen further in the latest organizational trends in the industry. “There is a shift in performance metrics, from income-driven to resource-driven. We are now treating capital as a form of resource and allocating capital into areas where profitability is higher,” he added.

By showcasing three cases on risk modelling, business volumes and margins, and convergence of risk and performance respectively, Lionel emphasized the significance of quantitative finance, and also shared his thoughts on the key attributes to succeed in the banking sector after graduating from MFE program.

With more than 20 years’ experience in financial risk management, banking and strategy, Lionel has held different management roles in Standard Chartered Bank, Samsung Group and BNP Paribas across Singapore, Seoul, London, and Beijing. He holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Economics from Paris Institute of Political Studies, and three Master’s Degrees, in Business Administration from IMD, in Corporate and Tax Law from Sorbonne University, and in accounting and finance from London School of Economics.