IRR: Advanced Technology for Financial Computing

Advanced Technology for Financial Computing

Introduction

Financial computing is an interdisciplinary field that brings together finance, economics, and computing. Today, financial computing is at the very heart of the operations of the world’s most prominent financial centres as this discipline provides a critical and practical appreciation of how data, computing and artificial intelligence technologies can be used and developed from both technology and business and organisations perspectives. Some of the key areas of interest in this field involve the creation of new technologies, systems, and paradigms to enhance asset pricing and investment decisions, market sustainability, risk management, leverage financial efficiency, create new financial ecosystems and solutions, and improve market transparency, regulation and ethical standards. 

There is not one central place to find articles to review given the interdisciplinary nature of the field. The recommendation is for you to first explore the general areas of your interest and then delve deeper into the specialised journals that cover the sub-areas and topics that you are interested. 

To help identify and explore the general areas of your interest, you may browse conference presentations, professional bodies and institutes websites, attend workshops, browse through academic journal publishers, and network with industry professionals to identify key thematic trends. To help you on this journey, we have compiled a set of seed sources, materials and emerging trends in the field.   

Key Academic Sources

  • Academic Journal Guide: This is a multidisciplinary peer-reviewed international journal ranking. The journals are categorised per overarching disciplines. Every journal is awarded either a 1, 2, 3, 4 and 4* stars, with the latter indicating the highest quality of world-class journals (strong sources are normally founds in 3 or more stars journals). You may be required to create a free of charge login to access the ranking list: https://charteredabs.org/academic-journal-guide-2021-view/ . Some of the most relevant thematic tracks to start exploring, with some key suggested journals:
    • ‘Economics, Econometrics and Statistics’: American Economic Review, Econometrica, Journal of Political Economy, Review of Economic Studies, Economic Journal, and Economica.  
    • ‘Finance’: Journal of Finance, Review of Financial Studies, Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Review of Finance, European Financial Management, European Journal of Finance,  Finance and Stochastics, Financial Analysts Journal, Insurance: Mathematics and Economics, Journal of Empirical Finance, Journal of Financial Markets, Journal of International Financial Markets, Institutions and Money, Journal of Portfolio Management, Journal of Risk and Insurance, and Quantitative Finance. 
    • ‘Information Management’: MIS Quarterly: Management Information Systems, European Journal of Information Systems, Journal of Information Technology, Decision Support Systems, Information and Organization, and Information Society.  
    • ‘Operations Research and Management’: Management Science, Operations Research, European Journal of Operational Research, IEEE Transactions on Evolutionary Computation, ACM Transactions on Modeling and Computer Simulation, Computational Optimization and Applications, Computers and Operations Research, Decision Sciences, Evolutionary Computation, Fuzzy Optimization and Decision Making, INFORMS Journal on Computing, International Journal of Forecasting, Expert Systems with Applications, and Omega, 
  • Foundations and Trends in Machine Learning: Contains some high-quality in-depth sources, with key thematic tracks being found under ‘Business’, ‘Economics’, and ‘Computer Science’. Once you know what sub-area you are interested in, you are more likely to find a relevant review article through a general web search, or seeing it cited in other papers. https://www.nowpublishers.com/FnTs

Key Prominent and Emerging Research Areas in the Field

  • Digital ethics and legal/regulatory aspects of computing and data in the financial industry
  • Interpretability of machine learning for financial applications
  • FinTech, InsureTech, blockchain technology and decentralised finance
  • Alternative assets, such as cryptocurrencies and NFTs
  • Big data analytics to investigate financial markets and/or investors’ behaviour and market microstructures
  • Natural Language Processing and text sources to support financial decision making and applications
  • Algorithmic trading, investment management, and risk management 
  • Financial instruments pricing and forecasting 
  • Synthetic data in the financial industry and its role in financial innovation

Key Conferences in the Field

Although participation in conferences often require a sign-in fee, it is common for them to publish conference papers and provide digital access to key presentations. Browsing through current and historical conference presentation titles may provide you with a quick overview of key themes and trends that are of relevance in the topic of your interest (normally, authors present their research in conferences before publishing them as journal articles). The list of speakers may provide you with some indication of the key researchers in your field (it is common for prominent researchers to regularly present in the main conferences in their field). Also, they provide you with a good starting point to network. If you find a research presentation or topic that you are interested in learning more about it, do not be afraid to contact the presenter – researchers often are very keen to connect and discuss more about their projects, ideas and areas of interest!

Although there is no central list of conferences in the field, and the conference schedule is updated regularly, below are some interesting starting points to discover events and conferences of your interest: 

Key Professional bodies and institutes

Professional bodies and institutes are a rich place to access a range of resources, such as white papers, Thought Leadership presentations and papers, discussion forums, webinars, and learning materials. Often, they organise special interest groups, formed of academics and professionals, thus providing an interesting place to network, explore in more depth your area of interest, and experience the discussion of future trends in the field from leading professional experts. Also, keep an eye on their website as some of them offer free student memberships and access to professional events. These are also a great place to observe how the impact of technical and knowledge advancements impact society and the economy, hence helping you contextualise the potential practical impact and relevance of your academic learning and development to your field of interest. Below are some of the key professional institutes that might be of your interest:

  • The Institute of Risk Management (IRM): This is a professional institute that covers all spectrums of risk management. It provides free student membership, it hosts events online and on different locations in the UK, and has a diverse range of special interest groups in finance that are free to join. https://www.theirm.org/
  • The Operational Research Society: This is a professional membership body aimed at supporting the development of people interested in operation research, data science and analytics on various fields, including financial computing. It offers free student memberships, and the society organises a series of events throughout the world. Furthermore, it provides access to a range of publications and training resources to students. https://www.theorsociety.com/
  • Institute Faculty of Actuaries (IFoA): This is a member-led society supported by a volunteer network of over 3,000 professionals. The IFoA is focused on advancing the practice areas of the actuarial profession within areas such as Finance and Investment, General Insurance, Pensions, Risk Management, and Financial Sustainability, and Banking and Data Science. https://actuaries.org.uk/
  • Global Association of Risk Professionals (GARP): This is the largest professional organisation for risk managers, which offers a special track in finance – ‘Financial Risk Manager (FRM)’. Here you can find a range of educational materials, events, and publications. https://www.garp.org/
  • CFA Institute: This is the leading institute in finance. It offers a range of resources and content on various issues in the financial industry, such as FinTech, Future of Finance and Trends, Technology and Finance, and Ethics, Fairness and Sustainability in finance and investment. https://www.cfainstitute.org/
  • Smart Data Foundry: This is a spin out organisation from the University of Edinburgh focusing on leveraging financial data and advanced analytics to support organisations, regulatory bodies, socio-economic developments, and FinTechs and start-ups. They have published a series of white papers and host events and presentations. https://smartdatafoundry.com/

 


 

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