Skip to main content

Financial technology (Fintech) combines innovative business models and computer technology to improve financial service. Since its emergence, it brings a wave of creative destruction that substantially changes the landscape of finance and have significant implications for the economy.

For example, the sudden rise of cryptocurrencies (eg Bitcoin), which compete with the fiat currencies and disrupt the existing payment system, poses great challenges to central banks and commercial banks.

Cardiff Fintech Research Group (CFRG) consists of 13 full-time academics at Cardiff University across the areas of finance, investments, quantitative methods and financial mathematics. Our Research Group encompasses several PhD students who are completing their doctoral research in areas related to Fintech.

Since its inception, CFRG has engaged in innovative and industrially relevant research and provided expertise to public and private sectors in Wales and beyond. Through links with Fintech Wales, CFRG has been involved in several projects and initiatives to promote Fintech innovations and solutions in Wales.

The Cardiff University Bitcoin Database or CUBID – created by Dr Hossein Jahanshahloo - is the first platform of its kind to allow users to access structured Bitcoin network data without advanced IT skills.

In Spring 2020, CFRG co-hosted with Fintech Wales the First Fintech Conference in Wales which attracted a large number of participants and featured speakers from the government, academia, and companies such as Microsoft. Please see the FinTech Wales AI for FinTech event on YouTube.

Aims

  • Raise Cardiff Business School’s reputation as a national and international centre for Fintech research.
  • Facilitate cross-disciplinary Fintech research among members of the research group and across sections and schools.
  • Engage in innovative and industrially relevant research and provide our expertise to public and private sectors in Wales and beyond.

Research

Our members’ research interests in Fintech include:

  • Cryptocurrencies
  • Blockchain
  • Banking (eg digital banking, open banking)
  • Insurance (insuretech)
  • Personal Finance (eg robo-advisors)
  • Payments (digital payment systems)
  • Lending (crowdfunding, P2P lending etc.)
  • Capital Markets (algorithmic and high frequency trading)
  • Wealth Management
  • Machine Learning and AI
  • Computer-assisted Textual Analysis

Publications

Events

The 2nd International Cardiff Fintech Conference - Call for Papers

The Cardiff Fintech Research Group is pleased to announce its 2nd International Fintech Conference taking place in person at Cardiff Business School on Wednesday 8 and Thursday 9 November 2023.

Past events

Cardiff Fintech Conference 2022

Cardiff, UK, 12 October 2022

The Cardiff Fintech Research Group is pleased to announce its inaugural fintech conference taking place in person at Cardiff Business School on Wednesday 12 October 2022.

The objective of this conference is to discuss cutting-edge fintech research that offers insights into the opportunities and challenges for fintech development. The Conference will feature a small number of high-quality papers to allow for in-depth presentations and discussions. The Conference will also feature a practitioner session.

We welcome submissions from all areas of financial technology, including but not limited to big data, blockchain and cryptoassets, computer-assisted textual analysis, crowd funding, digital banking, digital wealth management, machine learning and artificial intelligence. Both theoretical and empirical papers are welcome.

Keynote Speakers

Professor Lin William Cong is the Rudd Family Professor of Management at the Johnson Graduate School of Management at Cornell University. He is also the founding faculty director for the FinTech Initiative at Cornell and a research associate at NBER. Professor Cong serves as Editor (finance department) of Management Science, and Associate Editor of Journal of Financial Intermediation, Journal of Corporate Finance, and Journal of Banking and Finance.

Professor Brian Lucey is Professor of Finance at Trinity Business School, Trinity College Dublin, and Editor-in-Chief of International Review of Financial Analysis among various other former and current editorial roles. Professor Lucey has published extensively on a wide range of finance topics including cryptoassets, commodities and sustainable finance, and is regularly cited in the media.

Journal Affiliations

Presenters at the workshop are welcome to contribute to a special issue of The European Journal of Finance entitled “Fintech and Risk”, submission deadline 1 Nov 2022. The guest editors for the special issue are Steve Yang (Stevens Institute of Technology, USA), Arman Eshraghi (Cardiff, UK) and Maggie Chen (Cardiff, UK).

Selected conference papers may be also invited for submission to the following journals:

  • Finance Research Letters
  • Global Finance Journal
  • International Review of Economics and Finance
  • International Review of Financial Analysis

Conference Chairs

  • Arman Eshraghi, Cardiff Business School
  • Qingwei Wang, Cardiff Business School

Programme Committee

  • Hossein Jahanshahloo, Cardiff Business School
  • Yingli Wang, Cardiff Business School
  • Maggie Chen, School of Mathematics, Cardiff University
  • Anqi Liu, School of Mathematics, Cardiff University
  • Yuhua Li, School of Computer Science, Cardiff University

Our members have contributed to the following events: