Conduct a case study on how financial technology (fintech) has disrupted (or has not) traditional finance and/or financial services and markets. Your case study needs to include the following elements:

4FNCE004W Introduction to Financial Markets 2021-22

Individual Essay

The assignment is an individual essay. It is of an ‘exploratory’ nature, thus you are not required to download specific datasets. The length of the essay is 2,000 words (+/- 10%) excluding cover page, references, and appendices.

Required:

Conduct a case study on how financial technology (fintech) has disrupted (or has not) traditional finance and/or financial services and markets. Your case study needs to include the following elements:

Do you think fintech (in general) has or has not disrupted traditional finance and/or financial services? Support your arguments with evidence. [100 words]

Choose a subset of fintech areas (e.g. Blockchain, cryptocurrencies, predictive analytics, big data, high-frequency trading, P2P, smart contracts, AI and Machine Learning, financial regulation (finreg), etc.) and discuss within this subset area how it enhances (or not) financial services or markets that exist today. How were the markets differ prior to the integration of fintech? Support your arguments by quantitative analysis (using sources) and evidence. Again, you are not required to download specific datasets. [1,000 words]

Assume that you are a financial analyst who investigate potential investment opportunities in stock markets today. Given the backdrop of COVID-19 and Brexit (if UK stocks are chosen), what would be your investment recommendation to your clients who are willing to make investments in 2022? Provide maximum two companies that you think are good potential targets. [400 words]

Identify potential factors that may affect your recommendation. [500 words]

This essay should be submitted via Turnitin via the module blackboard site. You are expected to understand the university regulation on academic offence. The rules on late submission and plagiarism are applied and fully enforced by the school.

Submission of Coursework

Unless explicitly stated otherwise in writing by the module leader, all coursework on this module is submitted via Turnitin within Blackboard only. It will automatically be scanned through a text matching system (designed to check for possible plagiarism).

DO NOT attach a CA1 form or any other form of cover sheet;
Do NOT attach your data;
YOU MUST NOT include your name on the first page of your assignment and;
Use your STUDENT ID as the file name for the submission.

To submit your assignment:

Log on to Blackboard at http://learning.westminster.ac.uk;
Go to the relevant module Blackboard site;
Click on the ‘Submit Coursework’ link in the navigation menu on the left-hand side, as advised by the module teaching team;
Click on the link for the relevant assignment;
Follow the instructions.

You will be given details by the module teaching team about how and when you will receive your marks and feedback on your work.

REMEMBER:

It is a requirement that you submit your work in this way. All coursework must be submitted by 13.00 on the due date.

If you submit your coursework late but within 24 hours or one working day of the specified deadline, 10% of the overall marks available for that element of assessment will be deducted, as a penalty for late submission, except for work which is marked in the range 50 – 59%, in which case the mark will be capped at the pass mark (50%).

If you submit your coursework more than 24 hours or more than one working day after the specified deadline you will be given a mark of zero for the work in question.

The University’s mitigating circumstances procedures relating to the non-submission or late submission of coursework apply to all coursework.