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MSc in Software Engineering for Financial Services

Outline

Financial services are not only one of the most dynamic sectors of the economy but also one of the two largest customers of IT! This MSc is offered together with the Department of Economics in order to give you both a command of the software technologies that financial institutions require to "embrace the challenge of change" and of the business context and organisational structures that IT systems need to support.

This MSc programme concentrates on architectures for building scalable financial software systems, thus preparing software engineers for a plethora of jobs in the financial industry. In particular it considers technologies and techniques that are particularly relevant for the challenges of the financial market, predominantly a need to migrate from mission-critical, monolithic legacy systems to more flexible architectures that allow speedy reaction to customer and business partner’s needs. The technical aspect must be seen in the context of the business environment, where software engineers typically interact with a world of financial jargon and departments with specialised roles and needs.

The market

A special volume of the magazine Communications of the ACM dedicated to New Architectures for Financial Services identifies two main challenges that modern financial systems are having to address:

  • Advancements in telecommunications in general and the internet in particular are having deep consequences on the way financial institutions make their services available and make business. The availability and diversity of delivery channels requires that the information systems that support the core business are endowed with a robust but flexible software architecture that can accommodate new ways of making business while preserving core business invariants.

  • The speed with which new products need to be launched into the market, new regulations come into force, and merges and acquisitions take place among financial institutions, is not compatible with the monolithic legacy systems that are still operating in most organisations. In response to these circumstances, new ICT-based or ICT-enabled architectures for technology and organization are beginning to emerge in the financial services industry.

This view is strengthen by the report Business 2010: Financial Services published by the Economist Intelligence Unit, which is aptly subtitled "Embracing the challenge of change". This is what the report concludes:

    "Industry leaders are aware that nurturing the ability to adapt to change is the single most important challenge facing their firms. They also recognise the need to be fast, and just as well. Technology is making it possible for small players to launch innovative new services quickly, and for customers to switch to them just as fast. In this sense, IT offers financial industry firms both immense opportunity and certain competitive threats. Executives realise that how they use IT will do much to determine their ability to face up to the competitive challenges of the next five years."

In summary, there is a big market for software engineering skills directed to the methods and techniques that are required for designing and deploying new software architectures for financial services, and for re-engineering legacy systems to operate on these new architectures.

Programme structure

This programme aims to support software engineering skills and knowledge with deep understanding of financial organisations. This is achieved by a number of core modules and options drawn from computer science as well as economics offerings.

Core modules

In addition to the core modules that are shared by all programmes (CO7201 - Individual project, and CO7210 - Personal and Group Skills), this programme has four core modules:

  • CO7206 - System Re-engineering. The CACM article mentioned above is very clear on the crucial role of re-engineering techniques for the financial services industry to embrance the challenge of change:
    "Existing legacy technical and organizational infrastructures for financial services are overwhelmingly closed, monolithic, and inward-directed. The legacy architectures make it difficult for these organizations to modify, develop, and integrate their existing applications to meet the opportunities and challenges arising from deregulation, globalization, and the changing demands of the market."
    This module is delivered with the support of ATX Software, a company that specialises on the modernisation of legacy system, with a long experience in the financial sector.

  • CO7214 - Service-Oriented Architectures. From SAP to IBM, major IT providers are promoting SOA as the infrastructure that is best positioned to offer the levels of agility required in the financial services industry. This is what Mike Blum, partner and global banking leader for IBM Business Consulting Services, reported to The Financial Times on May 26, 2004:
    "The opportunity exists for banks to overcome the inflexibility and complexity of their traditional operational structure and become true "on-demand" banks. Technologies are available today that did not exist ten years ago to integrate business components. With middleware and web services we now have the technical enablement in place to take advantage of sharing business components across the enterprise."

  • CO7218 - Financial Services Information Systems. The vast majority of companies worldwide are looking for people that can manage or deploy IT effectively in the operational context of the business that they run. This module will provide an introduction to the key organizational units and functions that IT systems need to support in financial services organisations. Planning and delivery of this module is joint with ATX Software, Mr G.Koutsoukos (Eurobank EFG) also with the collaboration of other colleagues in leading financial institutions.

  • EC7084 - Principles of Finance. This module is delivered by the Department of Economics. It gives you an introduction to fundamental concepts and techniques used in modern finance theory so that you can understand the business context in which you will operated.

Optional modules

You will need to take three additional modules, through which you can favour the finance or the software engineering side of your degree.

At most two options can be from the supplementary list (see Course Structure). Otherwise, there are plenty of modules to choose from, including:

  • on the financial side, the following modules offered by Economics: EC7061 (Corporate Finance), EC7093 (Principles of Banking) and EC7075 (International Money and Finance);
  • on the software engineering side: Domain Specific Languages, Software Process Engineering and Advanced Web Technologies, among many others;
  • still on the financial side, besides the modules offered by Economics: Game Theory in Computer Science, and Financial Mathematics offered by the Department of Mathematics.
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Author: Computer Science MSc Admissions (csmsc@mcs.le.ac.uk).
© University of Leicester 26th May 2005. Last modified: 18th May 2010, 14:29:44.
CS Web Maintainer. This document has been approved by the Head of Department.