GBSN-CFTE: Center for Excellence in FinTech

“CFTE and GBSN co-develop the world’s first Center for Excellence in Fintech, connecting academia to practice to accelerate the development of Fintech education”

As Fintech is becoming more prominent in financial services, training programs from government and universities must continuously evolve. It’s in that context that GBSN and CFTE announce their collaboration to promote Fintech education in the academic world by co-developing the world’s first centre for Excellence in Fintech. CFTE and GBSN will advance and provide access to the core knowledge in Fintech to support the design and the delivery of content to complement existing offerings in financial education.

London and Washington D.C., 12 July 2022- CFTE (Centre for Finance, Technology and Entrepreneurship) and the Global Business School Network (GBSN) jointly announce the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding.

The collaboration between these two entities aims to foster Fintech education globally, leveraging the strength of GBSN network, powered by CFTE strategic knowledge in the matter. For example, one course being offered to faculty and students is CFTE’s “Fintech 360 Program”, a 6-week programme that deep dives into 6 major fields of the financial industry’s digital revolution: Fintech Foundation, Artificial Intelligence, Open Banking, Payments, RegTech, and Digital Assets.

“When we started CFTE with the objective of ‘education at scale’. As we anticipated the continuing growth of digital finance, we wanted to make sure that good Fintech education and opportunities were not restricted to just a few people in the main financial centres, but to everyone and today also to the students. I am extremely thrilled to be working alongside our partner GBSN to enable more universities and the students around the world, creating programmes online in Fintech. We are delighted with GBSN, and to set up centres of excellence in Fintech so all students have this opportunity to learn about Fintech and get them to work on projects. We are very impressed by GBSN’s willingness to innovate and try new pedagogical methods to keep bringing the best to their students. The partnership with GBSN is to strengthen fintech education for the developing world.” said Tram Anh Nguyen, the Co-founder of CFTE. 

“Advances in financial technology can contribute to building more inclusive and sustainable communities, but only if people have the needed knowledge and skills,” according to GBSN CEO, Dan LeClair, “because fintech is so dynamic, business schools need to work closely with business to keep fintech education current as well as make it more accessible, especially in emerging economies.” 

It is about building connective tissue between business and academia to accelerate the development of fintech education. 

This partnership was supported by Peter Ware, a long-term collaborator of GBSN and CFTE. 

This is not the first time CFTE is collaborating with universities to bring Fintech education to the academic world. The online learning platform did a similar partnership with GBSN’s member the EDHEC Business School, providing the “Fintech Foundation Program” to more than 1000 Masters students over the last 3 years. The Specialisation programme was delivered in hybrid format, initially offered as an elective, the course was oversubscribed in just 72 hours and achieved a satisfaction rate of 97%. 

“We’re delighted with the collaboration that we’ve built together over the last several years, forming close to a thousand Masters in Finance students in Fintech and Entrepreneurial Finance. Bringing together the cutting-edge education from CFTE, our professors at EDHEC, as well as industry players, we’ve been able to provide this innovative pedagogy in order to form the Fintech professionals of the future. We thank you for this collaboration and look forward to our continued work together.” said Michelle Sisto, Associate Dean for Graduate Studies at EDHEC Business School. 

In order to kick off this new project, GBSN is conducting a webinar to start conversations about integrating FinTech education into collegiate curricula, but also to introduce the new GBSN-CFTE Center for Excellence in FinTech, a great learning program which will provide real-world learning for students, as well as engagement opportunities with players in the financial industry. 

Academic faculty, institution’s administrators and practitioners across the world are invited to join us for this inaugural roundtable discussion on July 20th, 2022. 

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