FINC 361
Financial Innovation: Features and Applications
1. Catalog Entry
FINC 361
Financial Innovation: Features and Applications
Credit hours (3)
This course is intended to introduce COBE students to the innovative tools to manage
their personal and professional financial decisions.
2. Detailed Description of Course
Financial Innovation: Features and Applications will expose students to various new financial applications that they can apply in their personal life and professional career. In this course, Introduces students to the new developments in financial services and investments. The course will be divided into three main sections.
Section 1: Personal Finance
In this section, students will be introduced to the new methods that are very easy
to use and can raise personal financial services to a new level. Examples include
but not limited to the following situations:
1) Wallet-less Payment: Payments by cash and checks are considered old business
and use of credit and debit cards has
been in practice for a long time already. Now, personal finance has become
even simpler. The use of digital payment
systems like Apple pay, Google wallet, Samsung mobile pay, to name a few has
overtaken the use of credit cards and
one can pay for services and products without reaching to their wallet or
taking cards out to swipe. A one touch on
your smart phone is all it takes to take care of all the payments options.
2) Paperless selling: Introduce students to apps and websites that allow people
to sell the products online, offer
platform to individuals to post the products for bidding purposes, and in
turn deliver the product and collecting
the payments.
3) Credit checking: Expose students to the apps and websites that can help them
to check their credit and analyze the
score.
4) Digital Checks (Check 21): What is Check 21 act and how it improves the efficiency
of check clearance among banks,
role of the Federal Reserve in this activity, and how apps and financial institutions’
websites can be used for
sending digital image of checks as a substitute for physical delivery.
5) Online banking: How one can link his/her bank account to pay for regular payments
without writing a check physically
by using online banking services offered by banks.
Section 2: Investment and Financing
1) Motif Investing: Think like a portfolio manager and act like a professional
trader. An innovative way to create your
own portfolio, you can even buy fraction of shares and create a portfolio
of up to 30 securities at a very low cost
just like professional managers do. You can put your portfolio for public
display and your ideas are even eligible to
generate royalty payments for you if others are using or rebalancing your
motif.
2) Bitcoin: What is a bitcoin, how one can earn returns on it, how can it be used
as a substitute for currency, what could
be the potential issues of its use in the future.
3) Invest globally without owning an individual stock: The use of ETFs that can
give you market exposure at a low cost and
you can even buy a portfolio of stocks that you may not be able to own directly.
4) Crowd Funding: What it is, how it is different from others, and what it can
be used for.
Section 3: Corporate Finance
1) Securitization of Debt by Financial Institutions: How banks can recover original
loan amount by creating securities.
2) Catastrophe Bonds and Weather Bonds: Special types of bonds issued by corporations
to raise money. These types of
offerings not only offer a platform to issuers to raise money, but also used
by them as hedging tools against adverse
natural disasters and at the same time offer investors diversification and
varying yields.
3. Detailed Description of Conduct of Course
It is intended that this course will be first developed as an on campus course, then
also offered as a hybrid course and eventually made available entirely online. This
course is intended to include lectures, outside readings, customized chapters, among
other resources.
4. Goals and Objectives of the Course
Students will gain the knowledge of new financial products and techniques available in the market place and gain confidence to apply those techniques for personal and professional decisions.
Specific Learning Outcomes: Students will be able to:
1) Describe new financial products available in the market.
2) Outline and discuss the applications of new financial products.
3) Apply the new financial techniques in their personal and professional decisions.
4) Compare and contrast those new financial products with existing financial products.
5. Assessment Measures
Students’ progress may be measured by their performance on assignments, tests, term papers, and in class presentations & discussions.
6. Other Course Information
None.
Review and Approval
June 20, 2015