IFTE0013 Individual Assignment: Additional Guidelines “A Fintech Opportunity for the Board

IFTE0013 Individual Assignment: Additional Guidelines
“A Fintech Opportunity for the Board”
(by a fresh Fintech analyst)
Case:
“The Board of an incumbent financial institution (a traditional bank, or a venture capital fund or
even a charity) is challenged by the advent of fintech. The Chairman has asked the Board to
present options for embracing Fintech.
As a freshly hired Fintech analyst, boasting the UCL MSc, your remit is to bring your
(i) favourite fintech domain/ technology or
(ii) a specific fintech proposal, investment deal, or fintech market opportunity to the Board
attention.
You will select the focus: a hypothetical incumbent institution profile, then provide the specific
market and competitor analysis, expanding Fintech details when possible, tabulating a small
number of alternatives – for example, Fintechs competing in the same domain – suggesting the
most relevant metrics and/or KPIs that could guide the Board’s ultimate decision.
Ideally, your table will be summarising 3-5 innovative, early stage Fintechs willing to scale-up.
You will deliver an actionable, formal 2500 words long report to the Board”.
Objective
In previous Group Assignment, you and your Group have already searched for an innovative,
start-up Fintech companies worth investing at earliest stages.
What about your own Fintech views and ideas
Can you think of something Fintech-y that you would like to propose to a hypothetical financial,
or non-financial firm – or maybe pitch to your future employer
You have an opportunity to express your views and suggest a strategic Fintech project, or guide a
specific business decision to add value, possibly sourced from one of several early-stage
Fintechs.
Notably, you do not have to create an investment proposal or start-up – this is left for the final
Group project. Your novel, creative Fintech start-up ideas can be explored and presented in the
final Group project. For your Individual Assignment, you can research and evaluate what is
readily available in the marketplace.
Specifically, the understanding of a specific incumbent’s “pain point” and related potential
Fintech value added, incorporating market analysis, and suggested Fintech company-level
details is the best outcome.
Topic
The essay cannot be just an introduction of a broad Fintech domain or a tech concept. You must
assume that the blockchains, or the open banking, for example, are already well-known.
However, you may try to propose a specific, novel technology or business case, an application
targeting an underserved, niche, possibly international market addressed by an incumbent firm.
Your analysis should be followed by an actionable, well-scoped suggestion of Fintech deal
options.
In your analysis, you will demonstrate the understanding of a specific Fintech domain by
critically reviewing its value proposition and a small number of Fintech companies.
The best essays should be decisive and clear; their budgets, KPIs and recommendation to the
Board will be structured like an actual, actionable proposal.
The topic can be your selection of a specific Fintech component, or a new addressable market,
objectively weighing the pros/cons of specific short-listed Fintechs relative to other alternatives.
Introducing a specific investment deal, or a company is acceptable but not necessary. To
emphasise the points made earlier, the deal-level details such as general investment risk
factors, valuation, or other analytical components are not expected. You are not negotiating an
investment term sheet.
Your suggestion of a few potential vendors is perfectly acceptable.
However, it should be performed at a high standard, involving a few diagrams and structured
comparison of several alternatives. You are an analyst, a Master of Science, providing a well grounded, objective analysis, not a marketing or sales representative of a specific Fintech.
For example, you may tabulate a peer group of Fintechs, competitors in a niche domain.
The choice of comparison dimensions or features in your table will be more important than
colourful graphics. We do not expect comprehensive statistical or valuation analysis.
Try to be actionable and decisive; be as specific and objective as you can be. Try to justify why
your specific choices, perhaps the ultimate shortlisting of just two Fintechs, or a tech R&D
decision should make sense rather than other, similar ones
Searching for topic
You have already searched for Fintech companies in previous Group Assignment. By now you
have already encountered most foundational Fintech concepts, technologies and investment
formats.
The scope of your essay is virtually unlimited.
You are free to choose anything that you deemed attractive or interesting from a business
perspective, as you are trying to help an incumbent financial firm.
Any story or news in Fintech space that you liked may be expanded. Various web links
embedded in the lecture slides, Fintech news portals, should give you at least a few ideas.
We believe that you could find something missing in the current incumbent’s app or spot an
exotic market that an incumbent firm can address via Fintechs, or a piece of tech that sounds
exciting from the business perspective.
Google search is listing thousands of Fintech news portals – maybe top dozen are useful – and
recently even chatting with AI can help you choosing a specific domain where you can identify
interesting propositions or players.
Additional Marks
You can enhance your essay by attempting to identify the underlying specific, and possibly
necessary tech components and business partnerships, moving your essay beyond strategic,
high-level ideation stage.
The SWOT analysis or similar is not the requirement or a goal – any AI can generate it!
While it may be applied to a specific Fintech idea or client’s business, it is not sufficient on its
own.
Your actual selection of a few alternatives should be the goal. The analysis itself – choice of
KPIs, justification of the project size, focus on 2-3 new cross-border markets – is as important as
the originality or the quality of idea.
Making a truly actionable proposal will be a bonus. The balance of depth and length is flexible:
often a great unique insight does not require many pages or long justification.
Most importantly, the best ideas may be carried over to the final Group Project, if you can
convince other Group members that it is worth pursuing as a start-up project!
Final comments
We do not have any samples as this will be only the second year of using Essays in this Module.
Furthermore, we have discovered that samples are unnecessarily framing the essays and/or
constraining the real, non-AI creative thinking and exploration.
The best Essays in the past have introduced fresh, original Fintech aspects and domains (like
crowdfunding for aquatic fisheries in Southeast Asia, for example).
Acknowledgments
Thanks to Thi Thanh Thao Hoàng, Zhenhao Yi, Jothi Prasand Madheswaran, Usama Elahi
Khawaja, Hadia Quimmi and many other former and current students from the UCL, QMUL,
WBS, LBS and RAF who have emailed and/or asked clarification questions.