Journey to Universities: Finance and Tech

Technology has transformed people's behaviors and habits in the financial sector as well. Digital now plays a fundamental role in almost all interactions between customer and bank.
According to a research conducted by the Osservatorio Fintech & Insurtech Observatory of the Politecnico di Milano, 33% of Italian users between 18 and 74 years used at least one digital service, with a high average satisfaction. Data that confirm that digital continues to spread in the financial and insurance world, fueling new areas such as Fintech and Insurtech.

Fintech - a term that comes from the abbreviation of Finance and Technology - in its broadest sense indicates the convergence between technological innovation and financial services and includes all uses of digital tools applied in the financial field.
Home Banking, App for payments, debit / credit cards, lending platforms between individuals, but also robo-advisors and support for the use of crypto currencies, are the most popular fintech services among consumers.

All this creates a context in which:

• banks and fintech startups are pushing the digitization of the financial market, proposing new innovation strategies and new services and products to customers who must be increasingly open and ready to use digital technologies
• companies see facilitation spaces in customer relations by digitizing their customer experience in an increasingly diversified and evolved way
• the job market of the financial sector is already influenced by digital evolution in terms of composition and characteristics: the emergence of new professional figures linked to the world of techno-finance is emerging, who in addition to the technological knowledge underlying their activity, will have to be able to know and understand the mechanisms and characteristics that govern the traditional financial world, to develop new solutions in line with market trends; in addition, new activities appear within traditional banks that require new knowledge and skills to act in the changed external context
• Regulatory Technology, that is the technology applied to national and international regulation, allows companies to better comply with the legislation and to surveillance bodies an increasingly efficient and effective compliance monitoring.

In this context, digital has given efficiency to processes and speed to services but has also imposed very rapid times and new requirements on the players in the sector to keep pace with competitors and to guarantee operational and regulatory oversight. Therefore, institutions and Supervisory Authorities are committed to rethinking traditional rules in a digital key that are no longer adequate to manage the risks and opportunities of the new fintech phenomena. In turn, operators in the sector must broaden and enrich their background of skills to understand and manage subjects and tools that change quickly.
A complexity to manage and to regulate that cannot ignore people and their educational background which must be academic, specialist and technological to explore the phenomena described in a broad and in-depth way.

This is why, together with the universities, we wanted to create favorable conditions for spreading knowledge on the technicalities and on the economic and regulatory impacts of the new digital business.
Together with national and international universities, we have created and made available opportunities and initiatives for higher education and specialized focuses on financial techniques, marketing, regulatory and safety regulations, in addition to the inevitable soft skills and hard skills. A training mix that enables young talents and operators in the sector to act in the context with all-round visions.
Precisely in this perspective, Intesa Sanpaolo is part of many partnerships with various Italian and international universities. Valuable collaborations that take the form of co-designed training courses with the aim of exploring the connections between finance and technology to search for ideas, tools and solutions aimed at improving business models and processes, designing new products and services in compliance with the rules of market and protecting investors.

The Politecnico di Milano is committed to training engineers, architects and designers.
The university believes that knowing the world where you will work is a prerequisite for the training of students. For this reason, it is in close contact with companies and the public administration to walk together new research paths.
MIP is the University's Business School and is part of its School of Management.        
The MIP offers multidisciplinary courses and training initiatives in which research, academic training and postgraduate education are well combined with each other.    
The collaboration between Intesa Sanpaolo and MIP concerns two specialized masters in the Finance and Tech fields.

It is developed in collaboration with the Departments of Mathematics, Management Engineering and Electronics, Information and Bioengineering of the Politecnico di Milano and with the contribution of companies belonging to the sector including Intesa Sanpaolo.
The master explores new digital technologies and their applications in the financial world. The educational program, in addition to the key themes of the sector, also includes important visions on the IT world useful for understanding and designing business models and processes. It offers a high quality academic and business faculty and an experiential teaching methodology made even more effective by the international composition and the different backgrounds of the students that add liveliness, curiosity and resourcefulness to the different didactic activities.
Colleagues from the IMI Corporate Banking Division and the Innovation Department of the IT Digital Innovation Area actively collaborate with the faculty and make their professionalism and experience available to students. 
The outgoing profiles are thus ready to face the ever-changing financial industry.

It is developed in collaboration with the Department of Mathematics of the Politecnico di Milano and with companies in the sector including Intesa Sanpaolo.                       
The Master offers blended teaching that includes lectures, exercises and laboratories in the computer room, specialist seminars, interventions by business and academic representatives.
The contents covered concern specific know-how recognized in the financial industry. In fact, the educational program offers specialized focuses on the risk management of financial and insurance instruments made more complex by financial innovation and focus on the sophisticated mathematical techniques used for their valuation and for asset management in terms of composition of portfolios or strategies. hedging to achieve the risk-return objectives.
Intesa Sanpaolo collaborates significantly in the realization of the Master in terms of co-planning, teaching, seminars and testimonies, project work.                          
There are many colleagues from the structures of our Group present in the Faculty, each of whom brings with them their own professionalism and the expertise of the structure to which they belong.

A young, dynamic University that places students at the center of the multidisciplinary system of innovation designed to provide quality training capable of generating positive effects on the territory to improve everyone's life.
Intesa Sanpaolo and the University of Salento collaborate for the creation of a specialized master.

The Master offers the possibility to acquire a technical knowledge of digital technologies and of the possible applications in the organizational and business areas of banks. The educational program develops specific and transversal skills in the technological and managerial fields, applied to the financial sector with a sustainable approach.
Among the proposed contents, there are focuses on Blockchain, Big Data, Internet of Things, Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence, knowledge that can support strategic choices in the digital transformation of the traditional banking business, as well as in fintech start-ups.                                                                                                        
The collaboration of Intesa Sanpaolo takes the form of the co-design and provision of testimonials relating to the following thematic modules:

• Relations between Banks and Fintechs
• Robo-advisor and Artificial Intelligence in Asset Management
• Insurtech
• Challenges, professions and skills for the future
• Data driven innovation in the Corporate area
• The innovators in the bank.

The testimonials - by the colleagues of the Innovation Center, Innovation Department of the IT Digital Innovation and Relations with Universities Area - give students visions on the goals achieved by Intesa Sanpaolo and insights on the continuous need for research to read and anticipate industry trends.

It is a foundation that promotes research and higher education with the aim of preparing young university students to enter the world of work with recognized and appreciated skills. Intesa Sanpaolo contributes to the realization of a master's degree and encourages its attendance.

The partnership has materialized with the renewed establishment of scholarships for students of the Master in Finance Insurance e Risk Management Beyond the bags, the collaboration includes moments of sharing corporate expertise such as testimonials and company-visits.

Alma Mater has always promoted innovation with its training proposal marked by excellence and always attentive to the stimuli coming from the territory and from the many international relations activated over time.                                                              
In the Finance and Tech area, Intesa Sanpaolo and Alma Mater collaborate to create a master dedicated to banking regulation.

The master offers a complete view of the principles, purposes and rules of the Banking Union, as well as supervisory operating practices, including those relating to digital developments in the sector.
The professionals trained by the Master are experts in European and national banking and financial regulation who can find spaces in the world of supervisory authorities, or even in financial institutions and specialized consulting firms.                                       
The Master was designed by Alma Mater in collaboration with the Carlos III University of Madrid and with the contribution of Intesa Sanpaolo and other partners. In fact, the faculty also includes colleagues from the Central M&A and Group Equity Investments Department who, in the interventions and testimonies, develop contents deriving from the experience and expertise in FinTech and sustainable finance issues matured in the company.

It is known as the best and most influential university in Europe, one of the top ten in the world, the oldest in the Anglo-Saxon world. This is how one of its mottos goes: "The only things that Oxford students have in common are academic skills and intellectual curiosity".                                                                                                                     
Intesa Sanpaolo collaborates with the University of Oxford for the creation of a master's degree dedicated to financial regulation.

It is a Master that explores in depth and interdisciplinary economic and financial contexts with a focus on the law that governs the world of finance.
The Master - run jointly by the Faculty of Law of the University of Oxford and Saïd Business School - offers a ten-month full-time teaching program that combines legal and financial disciplines, and is aimed at offering a springboard for a career in success in the areas of law, regulation, finance or academia.
Intesa Sanpaolo contributes to the initiative with the establishment of scholarships for students with law degrees from Italian universities who intend to deepen the subject and deal with the didactic vivacity of Oxford University.