Artificial intelligence, big data, blockchain, and other new technologies have upended the global financial services sector, creating opportunities for entrepreneurs and corporate innovators. Venture capitalists have helped to fund this disruption, pouring nearly $500 billion into fintech over the last five years.
David L. Shrier, Alex Pentland, and a wide range of contributors explore how the global financial services sector has been transformed by these advancements in artificial intelligence, data science, and blockchain in their new book Global Fintech (on sale March 8, 2022 from the MIT Press).
“Fintech is without question beginning to permeate every aspect of our daily existence, and it is reshaping how we live our lives,” writes Shrier—a Professor of Practice (AI and Innovation) with Imperial College Business School—and Pentland, who directs the MIT-wide initiative MIT Connection Science. “More than 200 million WeChat users are now conducting banking-like activities from their mobile phones, demonstrating that we already have technology that could bring the 3.5 billion underbanked and unbanked people in the world into the global financial system.”
This book examines not only the struggles of rich countries to bring the old analog world into the new digital one but also the opportunities for developing countries to “leapfrog” directly into digital; it offers global perspectives on technology-fueled transformations in financial services, with contributions from a wide-ranging group of academics, industry professionals, former government officials, and current government advisors.
“When we began our journey to understand how fintech will go global, we had no idea that our online entrepreneurship classes would spread to over 150 countries. It was a chance to grow a philosophy twenty years in the making,” Shrier and Pentland write.
Global Fintech furthers this work, offering accessible explanations of blockchain and distributed ledger technology and explores big data analytics. It considers, among other things, open banking, platform-based strategies for banks, and digital financial services. Case studies imagine possible future fintech-government interaction, emphasizing that legal and regulatory frameworks can help to create trust in financial processes. Contributors—including Ajay Bhalla, Michelle Chivunga, John D’Agostino, Mark Flood, Amias Moore Gerety, and many others—offer novel takes and unexpected insights that will be of interest to fintech experts and nonexperts alike.
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About the editors:
David L. Shrier is a Professor of Practice (AI and Innovation) with Imperial College Business School. He is coeditor of New Solutions for Cybersecurity (MIT Press).
Alex “Sandy” Pentland directs the MIT-wide initiative MIT Connection Science. Called one of the “seven most powerful data scientists in the world” by Forbes, he has cofounded more than a dozen companies and is the author of Social Physics and coauthor of Building the New Economy (MIT Press).
Learn more about the book on the MIT Press website: https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/global-fintech