Founded in partnership with Credit Suisse, Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley and Reuters, this new MSc aims to increase the diversity of graduate intake from UCL into investment banking technology careers and provides a pathway for highly talented students from non-IT backgrounds to give them the skills they need for a career in financial services technology.

The partner banks are deeply involved in the curriculum design and annual updates thereof (with appropriate academic guidance and governance from UCL); the delivery of the curriculum, including a large number of lectures (typically 30 hours each year, involving 30-60 bank staff), tutorials & mentoring, and the hosting of summer projects.

The target enrollment for this degree programme is 20-30, and the MSc specifically aims to attract a highly diverse body of students - in particular, to exceed the CS department historical norm of roughly 15% women students).

Metrics:

National and international recognition:

The new MSc programme and the new laboratory (see below) have attracted repeated interest from the press (e.g. The Guardian, The Telegraph, The Times, various industry magazines) and broadcast media (e.g. BBC News, BBC Radio 5) - mostly in the UK but also overseas (we have, for example, been visited by a camera crew from an Austrian television production company).

UCL is now an established graduate recruitment pipeline for technology graduates seeking IT careers with investment banks throughout Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

We have received delegations and expressions of interest from many universities in the Far East (e.g. Dalian University of Technology, China; National Chiao Tung University, Taiwan; the University of Malaya; the National University of Singapore) who are now sending their graduates to London to study on the MScFC.

We have assisted the Budapest University of Technology and Economics in Hungary to establish degree-level modules in Financial Computing in partnership with Morgan Stanley and with assistance from the London Business School.

Finalist: LDA Commercial Deal of the Year Award [2008]

Founded in partnership with Reuters, and with sponsorship from Credit Suisse, Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch and Morgan Stanley.

The Virtual Trading Floor is Europe's largest IT educational trading floor, established to support the new MSc in Financial Computing and also to support Financial Computing research.  It comprises 30 "trader-spec" PCs each with dual screens, Reuters software and real-time streaming data-feeds from the world’s financial exchanges.

National and international recognition:

The new laboratory has attracted repeated interest from the press (e.g. The Guardian, The Telegraph, The Times, various industry magazines) and broadcast media (e.g. BBC News, BBC Radio 5) - mostly in the UK but also overseas (we have, for example, been visited by a camera crew from an Austrian television production company).

Follow this link for the UCL news item [1] and the following links for UCL in the News: [2] [3].

Winner: UCL Enterprise Partner of the Year Award [2008]

The Financial Services Knowledge Transfer Network (KTN) (2009)

This independent venture "FS-KTN" was funded by the Technology Strategy Board (TSB), the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) and the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) to bring academia together with industry and encourage partnerships and the identification of business challenges to inform academic research.

The FS-KTN advisory board includes: Arun Aggarwal (UK regional director, SWIFT), Prof. Dave Cliff (Bristol University), Sir John Gieve (chairman, VocaLink and ex-deputy of the Bank of England), Prof. Dougal Goodman (Lighthill Risk Network), George Maddison (vice chairman of UK investment banking, Credit Suisse), Andrew Milligan (head of global strategy at Standard Life), Lord Ron Oxburgh, Adrian Pearce (Credit Suisse), Prof. Michael Power (LSE), Marilyn Ramplin (Ramplin Capital), Anthony Salz (executive vice-chairman of Rothschild), and Richard Ward (CEO, Lloyd's).

The FS-KTN was designed as a dynamic network of partner organisations, led by an independent special-purpose not-for-profit company "FS-Net".  The partner organisations included:

• Universities: Brunel University, Cass Business School (City University), Cranfield University, Heriot-Watt University, The Financial Services Research Forum (Nottingham University), University College London (UCL), University of Aston, University of Cambridge, University of Edinburgh, University of Exeter, University of Oxford, University of St. Andrews, and University of Strathclyde.
• Networking, consulting and domain-specialist organisations: Centre for the Study of Financial Innovation, Expand Consulting, The 451 Group, The Financial Services Club (see also The Finanser), The London Technology Network, The Insurance Intellectual Capital Initiative, The Practical Law Company, and The Willis Research Network.
• Trade associations & Professional Bodies: The Actuarial Profession, The Association of British Insurers, and The Chartered Insurance Institute.
• Regional bodies and business support: Greater London Enterprise, The Leeds Financial Services Initiative, Scottish Enterprise, Scottish Financial Enterprise, and Ven Management.

Outstandingly successful in its first year: the core team undertook over 150 meetings with industry and academia, ran over 30 workshops and 35 other events, and started work on 25 projects. Two key outputs for the FS-KTN in the first year were (i) a comprehensive review of research challenges in the financial services industry, to guide the research councils and academic researchers and (ii) a study of systemic risk in the financial markets (outsourced to JWG, with substantial input from Clack).

Follow this link for the UCL-CS news item and this link for the UCL news item.

The Systemic Risk Working Group (2010)

The Systemic Risk Working Group (SRWG) brings together academia and industry to explore and address fundamental issues in the understanding, monitoring and control of systemic risk.  The SWRG emphasises a pragmatic, multi-disciplinary approach to systemic risk, encouraging input from industry practitioners, computer scientists, mathematicians, economists, psychologists, complexity scientists and experts from many other disciplines.

Example topics include the practical details relating to the control of systemic risk, such as regulatory data requirements and inconsistent reference data.  We also engage with international policy makers and regulators on matters relating to monitoring and regulation.  This is an enormous task in both scale and complexity and the SRWG is engaging with industry to help analyse the practical problems and synthesize solutions.

We are keen to engage with a wide range of industry practitioners.  Our most active current  industry partner is JWG, a firm of independent analysts who are highly active in engaging with thought leaders and key stakeholders across the global financial system to define and scope the issues that must be resolved if the supervisors are to be able to fulfil their responsibilities.

The Financial Stability Research Forum (2011)

The inherent instability of the financial markets is one of the most pressing research challenges faced by the UK.  Current theory appears to falter when used to explain, describe and simulate the behavioural issues that lead to instability, and to understand positions of disequilibrium and instability within the financial markets.  Regulators and policymakers are therefore keen to encourage more academic research in this area, and to establish a forum where their teams can meet with academics to discuss and explore the challenges in theory and practice.