Media Releases

New Financial Innovation Hub Established at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management

November 21, 2017

Toron­to, ON – A new part­ner­ship has been launched at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Toronto’s Rot­man School of Man­age­ment to pro­mote and devel­op ini­tia­tives for stu­dents and fac­ul­ty in the area of finan­cial inno­va­tion across all of the school’s pro­grams.

The Rot­man Finan­cial Inno­va­tion Hub in Advanced Ana­lyt­ics (Rot­man Fin­Hub) will cre­ate new class­es and learn­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties for stu­dents in finan­cial inno­va­tion includ­ing machine learn­ing and blockchain in the school’s MBA, Mas­ter of Finance, and Mas­ter of Finan­cial Risk Man­age­ment pro­grams as well as sup­port­ing schol­ar­ships for stu­dents inter­est­ed in the field.  The Rot­man Fin­Hub will also encour­age research in finan­cial inno­va­tion by fac­ul­ty mem­bers and pro­mote engage­ment with the finan­cial indus­try through con­fer­ences and sym­po­siums.  The Rot­man Fin­Hub will lever­age the exper­tise of Rot­man fac­ul­ty along with exist­ing research cen­tres and will also col­lab­o­rate with oth­er UofT fac­ul­ties as well as exter­nal finan­cial, eco­nom­ic and tech­nol­o­gy orga­ni­za­tions.

“Giv­en the rad­i­cal changes cur­rent­ly affect­ing the finance sec­tor, we believe that our Rot­man Fin­Hub ini­tia­tive will enhance the Rot­man School’s lead­er­ship posi­tion in finan­cial man­age­ment teach­ing and research,” says Prof. Peter Christof­fersen, TMX Chair in Cap­i­tal Mar­kets. “It will also help us attract the best researchers as well as stu­dents who are inter­est­ed in study­ing finan­cial inno­va­tion.”

Today at the first event for the Rot­man Fin­Hub, it was announced that the ini­tia­tive will be finan­cial­ly sup­port­ed by a lead dona­tion by the TD Bank Group of $1 mil­lion.

“Data is the engine that will empow­er Canada’s finan­cial indus­try to devel­op deep­er rela­tion­ships with our cus­tomers. To do this, banks must face a fun­da­men­tal chal­lenge head-on – we must con­tin­ue to put our data to work for our cus­tomers to give them even more infor­ma­tion and more options to build their finan­cial futures, ” says Chris­t­ian Nelis­sen, Senior Vice Pres­i­dent, Enter­prise Data and Ana­lyt­ics, TD Bank Group. “To do that we need to fos­ter the devel­op­ment of a strong cul­ture of inno­va­tion and the tal­ent to sup­port it. Toron­to’s Fin­Tech ecosys­tem is among the best in the world and Rot­man and the Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to are lead­ing finan­cial edu­ca­tors – we think that’s a pow­er­ful com­bi­na­tion. We are in this for the long-term and I’m per­son­al­ly very excit­ed about where we’re head­ed and the part­ner­ships, tal­ent and inno­va­tions that are going to get us there.”

The Rot­man Fin­Hub is also sup­port­ed with a $1.3 mil­lion con­tri­bu­tion from the Rot­man Cat­a­lyst Fund, a ven­ture fund to pro­vide seed cap­i­tal for bold inno­va­tions and ini­tia­tives with­in the Rot­man School. In addi­tion, the Glob­al Risk Insti­tute in Finan­cial Ser­vices is con­tribut­ing $150,000.

The Rot­man School is glob­al­ly rec­og­nized for its pro­grams and research in finance. It offers a high­ly regard­ed Mas­ter of Finance pro­gram for work­ing pro­fes­sion­als in the finance indus­try, a Mas­ter of Finan­cial Risk Man­age­ment for recent uni­ver­si­ty grad­u­ates, as well as majors in Risk Man­age­ment and Finan­cial Engi­neer­ing, Funds Man­age­ment, Invest­ment Bank­ing, and Finan­cial Report­ing and Analy­sis in its Full Time and Morn­ing and Evening MBA pro­grams.

Fur­ther infor­ma­tion on the Rot­man Fin­Hub is online at www.rotman.utoronto.ca/FacultyAndResearch/ResearchCentres/FinHub.

The Rot­man School of Man­age­ment is locat­ed in the heart of Canada’s com­mer­cial and cul­tur­al cap­i­tal and is part of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to, one of the world’s top 20 research uni­ver­si­ties. The Rot­man School fos­ters a new way to think that enables our grad­u­ates to tack­le today’s glob­al busi­ness and soci­etal chal­lenges.  For more infor­ma­tion, vis­it www.rotman.utoronto.ca.

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Ken McGuf­fin
Man­ag­er, Media Rela­tions
Rot­man School of Man­age­ment
Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to
Tel: 416–946-3818
E‑mail: mcguffin@rotman.utoronto.ca