The digital revolution has had an impact on all sectors of business, particularly finance. Since 2017, NEOMA Business School has introduced new courses to its programmes and continues to develop them so it can better prepare its students for this new business environment.
Sami Attaoui, head of the finance department at NEOMA BS, explained to us how digital finance has entered the curriculum and the effect of its technical and human aspects.

“Machine learning, artificial intelligence and blockchain technology have gone on to trigger a revolution that is currently having a major impact on the asset management and banking professions as well as on the financial operations carried out by businesses, governments and communities. This change is both an opportunity and a challenge for the traditional players, who need to incorporate this digital transformation into their business models, and for entrepreneurs and start-ups, who are compelled to develop new practices. We have seen the emergence of crowd funding, peer-to-peer lending, cryptocurrencies, digital wallets, robot-advisors, machine trading, etc.

The financial studies curriculum at NEOMA BS has incorporated all of these changes by offering several courses focused on these subjects in our diverse programmes at a different stages of the curriculum. Our goal is to offer a three-prong approach touching on technology, data and the human aspect. It is the pedagogic structuring around these three aspects that define the unique learning experience at NEOMA BS.

An experience-based approach
Our pedagogic approach relies on the committed involvement of professional experts from banks, consulting firms, and financial technology backgrounds who share with our students their experiences as well as textbook case studies that help them better understand the possibilities offered by these new technologies. Our pedagogy also relies on providing support to students in the analysis of current (French) financial technologies as well as the formulation of new ideas and projects. Students have already participated in the jobs forum as well as the Start-Up Pitch Contest, which were organised during the Paris Blockchain Week Summit at Station F. We have fully incorporated the application of financial models in our courses so students can visualise the various limits of these models through real data.

Strengthening the human aspect
We think that the use of these technological advances must be accompanied by a strengthening of the human aspect involved in finance. To do this, we added a course in behavioural finance to the Masters in Management programme that will help demonstrate how to include the impact of cognitive bias such as motivation, emotion, impulsion, fear, regret and loss aversion on financial decisions. We have then reinforced this educational approach with more advanced courses for the finance specialisation that challenge the relevance and suitability of classic financial decisions in light of the progress made through behavioural finance.

Lastly, our educational approach emphasises the contemplative aspect, which must always by a part of the overall scope of learning.”

At the start of the 2019 academic year, the offer will be expanded even further with the opening of a new Master of Science programme in Finance & Big Data as well as a specialised track in the Masters in Management programme in Risk and Financial Technologies, which will be connected with the international GARP certification.

Learn more:
-    The Masters in Management at NEOMA BS: excellence tracks in Finance & MSc in Finance
-    MSc Finance & Big Data