FinTech

Banks and other financial institutions are central entities that are crucial to the way capital markets are organized today. They have a variety of tasks: They lend to business and retail customers, thereby creating money, accept deposits, transfer money, advise customers, help companies issue stocks, and much more. While all of these services are important for the smooth allocation of capital in an economy, recent technological advances allow so-called FinTech companies to challenge banks' traditional business models. While FinTechs are still centralized entities, decentralized innovations based on blockchain technologies have the potential to fundamentally upend the system.

We start with a discussion of the problems with capital allocation and what financial institutions are doing to address these problems. The key question we are interested in is how efficient alternative solutions offered by traditional banks, FinTechs and Decentralized Finance applications are compared to each other. What are the advantages and disadvantages of the new technologies and how likely are they to prevail? In the different parts of the course, we will explore specific examples, including the status quo and possible ways forward.

The course is organized into seven thematic blocks: Foundations, Blockchain Infrastructure, Money & Payments, Banking, Markets & Trading, Funding & Investing, and Data, Risk & Regulation. Two questions recur across all seven blocks and form the backbone of the course: Why do financial intermediaries such as banks exist, and which market frictions do they address? and Does a given FinTech's business model create genuine economic value, or does it primarily rely on regulatory arbitrage? Almost every example we discuss (such as neobanks, decentralized exchanges, stable coins, and InsurTech) will be evaluated against these two questions.

Course format

Each week combines two lectures and one tutorial. Every lecture opens with a focused, 20 - 45-minute presentation of the underlying theory, before turning into a structured, case-based discussion of a real FinTech company or event related to that week's topic. Tutorials deepen the week's material further, combining a short problem set (to be solved individually before the session, with a model solution provided for self-study) with an additional case discussion in class.

This format is deliberately aligned with the exam (see below): the interactive, case-based discussions in the lectures and tutorials are direct practice for the kind of conversation you will have with the instructor in the oral exam. Attending and actively participating in these sessions is the best preparation for the exam.

FinTech in the Winter Semester 2026/2027:

The course takes place during the first half of the winter semester (with three sessions per week) and will end before the end-of-year break. It begins on October 28 and includes interactive lectures, held on Wednesdays at 9:45 a.m. and 11:30 a.m., and tutorials, held on Thursdays at 9:45 a.m. in Building 09.21 (Bluecherstr. 17), Room 124. A list of exact dates for lectures and tutorials can be found below. Students should bring a laptop or tablet for the interactive parts of the sessions.

Web ressources

All course materials (slides, problem sets, syllabus,...) can be found on the ILIAS page of the course. All kinds of announcements related to the course will be published exclusively on ILIAS.

Exam

Grades are based on individual, 30-minute oral exams: each student is randomly assigned one FinTech company or project and discusses it with the instructor, applying the concepts covered throughout the course to that specific case - the same format practiced in the interactive parts of the lectures and in the tutorials throughout the semester (see "Course format" above).

A substantive, evidence-based discussion is expected, not a superficial recitation of buzzwords. You should be able to (1) identify which financial-market friction the company's business model addresses, (2) connect it to the relevant theoretical concepts from the course, and (3) assess whether it creates economic value or relies on regulatory arbitrage.

There will be two exam periods during the winter semester: One in early January and another one in late February. Moreover, there is an exam period at the end of the summer semester. The exact dates will be announced on ILIAS. Students have to sign up for the exam via the campus system and arrange a time slot with Julian Thimme by sending an email to thimme ∂does-not-exist.kit edu. In justified exceptional cases, it is possible to take the exam outside the scheduled examination periods. If you need an alternative date, please contact Julian Thimme by email.