Columbia University School of Professional Studies Chief Academic Officer Sharyn O’Halloran and Applied Analytics (M.S.) Program Director Thomas Deely hosted a panel discussion at the Columbia Club on “FinTech and Financial Regulation.” Dr. O'Halloran unveiled the Columbia University FinTech Lab, providing increased financial literacy for students and non-technical risk managers through the industry’s first freely available, open source analytics engine and visualization tool.
A key issue for regulators and the financial service industry is mitigating systemic large-scale counterparty risk. Currently, individual financial institutions and regulators conduct systemic risk exposure analysis using proprietary models and data protocols absent any agreed upon baseline, best practices or public scrutiny. Without industry standards, shared benchmarks, or means to validate results, the impact of alternative policy interventions on the overall risk in the financial system remains uncertain.
This initiative showcases new open source analytical tools that develop highly granular trade and cross-asset class risk simulation and aggregate at the counterparty level. Bringing large-scale open source risk models to the public domain will enable a standard-based approach that facilitates research and greater understanding of the impact that policy levers have on the financial system.
Dr. O'Halloran and Deely were joined by a panel of guests including Ben McLannahan, US Banking Editor, Financial Times; Emanuel Derman, M.S. Program Director, Financial Engineering, Columbia University; Paul Glasserman, PhD, Research Director, Program for Financial Studies, Columbia Business School; Brian Ruane, CEO of Broker-Dealer Services & Head of Banks, Bank New York Mellon; and Mayur Thakur, Managing Director of Compliance Analytics, Goldman Sachs.
