Canadians slow to adopt fintech

The University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management is aiming to inject innovation into its student programs and faculty research with the launch of the Rotman FinHub on Tuesday.

Through the Rotman FinHub, otherwise known as the Rotman Financial Innovation Hub in Advanced Analytics, the university will create new classes and learning opportunities for its students in its master’s of business administration, master of finance and master of financial risk-management programs. These new classes will focus on developing areas of financial technology, such as blockchain and machine learning.

Furthermore, the Rotman FinHub also has a mandate to encourage research in financial innovation by university faculty and to promote engagement with the financial services sector through conferences and symposiums.

“The word ‘hub’ is very deliberate,” says Tiff Macklem, dean of Rotman School of Management, who spoke at the Rotman FinHub’s first conference in Toronto on Tuesday. “We want this to be a meeting place where the financial services industry comes to bring its toughest questions for our faculty [and] our students to dig their teeth into.”

In fact, the financial services sector is already involved in the city’s latest innovation hub. More specifically, Toronto-Dominion Bank (TD) has donated $1 million to be paid out over five years to the Rotman FinHub.

For Christian Nelissen, senior vice president, enterprise data and analytics with TD, the partnership is one way for the bank to bring together the technological know-how the organization will need in the future, particularly in the area of data analytics, with the softer skills students generally learn at a business school.

“Those skills, in my mind, are as important as the technical skills,” says Nelissen, who also spoke at Tuesday’s conference.

The new hub will also be funded by donations from the Toronto-based Global Risk Institute of Financial Services and a $1.3 million contribution from the Rotman Catalyst Fund.

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