Seton Hall Launches Financial Technology Major for Undergraduates

Students within Finance now have three areas from which to select: Finance, Mathematical Finance, and Finance and Technology, often referred to as “FinTech.”

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The Department of Finance within the Stillman School of Business at Seton Hall University has launched a Finance and Technology major for undergraduates. Students within Finance now have three areas from which to select: Finance, Mathematical Finance, and Finance and Technology, often referred to as “FinTech.”

Seton Hall is one of only two universities in the United States currently offering a degree designated concentration in FinTech for undergraduates. For MBA students, only Georgetown, Penn and Fordham offer similar. Other universities, graduate and undergraduate, have largely limited their offerings to one or two courses or “experiences” within their other programs.

“FinTech is currently the leading disruptive force in financial services, and the industry expectation is that these forces will remain in place powered by the unabated forward pace of technology,” said Finance Professor Elven Riley, the program designer and former Wall Street executive and advisor to some of the world’s largest investment banks. “No financial transaction completed today, from simple checking accounts to complicated mergers and acquisitions, can be accomplished without technology. And the intersection of finance and business analytics with data and machine learning is at the cutting edge of the profession in the 21st century.  Enabling our students to focus on FinTech uniquely prepares them for the most well-paid and sought-after positions in the financial industry.”

The major in Financial Technology is comprised of 24 credits and features courses such as:

  • Technology of Finance
  • Financial Strategy
  • Business Intelligence
  • Business Applications of Machine Learning
  • Financial Modeling
  • Business Information Modeling
  • Portfolio Analysis
  • Investment Analysis
  • Introduction to Programming
  • Advanced Software Tools
  • Corporate Risk Management

The major itself as well as course selection for FinTech was designed and vetted for industry relevance by the Stillman Finance Advisory Board, which includes executives and managing directors at J.P. Morgan, HSBC Securities, Ayco (a Goldman Sachs company), Investors Bank, Bank of New York-Mellon and FINRA.  

“At the Stillman School of Business, we pride ourselves on putting our students ahead of the curve, and this is just one more example,” said Dean Joyce Strawser. “Our Finance Department is results-driven and consistently recognized among the top in the nation, and our recent graduates have benefitted from a 94 percent career-related employment rate within six months of graduation. This new focus on FinTech will enhance the market value of our students to top financial services companies.”

Named the #1 Leadership program in the nation by HR.com for five years in a row, the Stillman School of Business has repeatedly been named by U.S. News & World Report, The Princeton Review, Poets & Quants and a host of other ranking sources as one of the best business schools in the nation.  The Finance Department within the Stillman School of Business at Seton Hall University is officially recognized by the Chartered Financial Analysts Association – a recognition that only 10% of finance departments nationwide have attained – and by the Certified Financial Planning Board, considered one of the most prestigious of all professional finance designations. The Stillman team has also represented the Americas, besting all other U.S. and Canadian schools in the CFA Institute Research Challenge twice in the last four years, the only U.S. school to do so among over 1100 participating schools worldwide.  

“Current business practices indicate that the gap between the finance staff and the technology staff is getting wider, with more internal organization silos, as both domains become more complicated and require more specialization,” said Chair of the Department of Computing and Decision Sciences, Professor David Rosenthal. “The industry needs employees that can bridge these gaps— and this concentration in FinTech is designed to do just that.”        

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