Bachelor of Finance and Artificial Intelligence
Key Facts
| Section | Details |
|---|---|
| Award | Bachelor of Finance and Artificial Intelligence (BFAI) |
| Level | Undergraduate |
| Duration | 4 Years (8 Terms) |
| Format | Full-time |
| Credit Definition | 1 credit = 1 hour of tuition/lab/recitation per week for 10–13 weeks |
| Total Credits | ~180 ECTS Equivalent |
| Study Locations | India, Dubai, Shanghai, Ghana, United States, Argentina, Europe + Global Internship |
| Program Goal | Train finance operators, investors, and builders who can deploy capital, build systems, and operate under real-world constraints from day one |
Program Details
| Section | Details |
|---|---|
| Program Philosophy | Most finance programs teach models first and hope judgment follows. This program flips that. Students operate in real markets early, deploy capital, build financial products, and confront uncertainty firsthand. Theory is introduced when it becomes necessary, not before. |
| Learning Model | Every term ends with a real output: a product, a portfolio, a strategy, or a system. Students repeatedly go through the loop: learn → apply → deploy → measure → defend decisions. This builds conviction and decision-making ability under pressure. |
| Finance + AI Integration | AI is not taught as a separate domain. It is embedded directly into finance workflows: portfolio construction, credit scoring, risk modeling, fraud detection, trading systems, and financial infrastructure. |
| Global Exposure | Each geography is chosen deliberately. Students experience financial inclusion (India), capital concentration (Dubai), market sophistication (China), emerging markets (Africa), institutional finance (US), and crisis economics (Argentina). |
| Execution First Approach | Students don’t simulate. They manage real money, build real products, and interact with real users and institutions. The goal is not academic completeness, but practical capability. |
| Capstone Philosophy | Capstones are the backbone of the program. They are designed to feel slightly out of reach. If even a handful of students succeed at a high level, the outcome should be strong enough to stand on its own in the real world. |
Curriculum Structure
| Term | Location | What You'll Learn | What You'll Do |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | India | Financial systems, fintech infrastructure, mathematics, accounting, ethics | Build FinTech for the Unbanked: a real product serving underserved users with live pilots |
| 2 | Dubai | Portfolio theory, statistics, financial modeling, macroeconomics, Islamic finance | Run a Real Investment Portfolio: manage live capital with formal investment processes |
| 3 | Shanghai | Derivatives, econometrics, algorithmic trading, valuation, market microstructure | Build an Algorithmic Trading Strategy: design, backtest, and deploy a systematic strategy |
| 4 | Ghana | Credit systems, ML in finance, data infrastructure, forensic accounting | Build a Fintech Product for Emerging Markets: solve a real financial problem with real users |
| 5 | United States | Equity research, stochastic finance, AI systems, venture capital, regulation | Run a Student Hedge Fund: operate like an institutional fund with reporting and governance |
| 6 | Argentina | Alternative assets, portfolio construction, DeFi, game theory, behavioral finance | Manage Capital in a Crisis Economy: navigate inflation, currency risk, and instability |
| 7 | Europe | Advanced finance electives, policy, global markets (via partner institute) | Deep Specialization + Industry Exposure |
| 8 | Global | No coursework | Full-Time Internship or Venture Build |
Program Benefits
| Category | Details |
|---|---|
| Real Capital Experience | Students manage real money across multiple terms, not paper portfolios. |
| Global Financial Exposure | Learn how finance behaves across radically different economic systems. |
| AI as a Tool, Not a Buzzword | Apply AI directly to financial decision-making and systems. |
| Execution Under Uncertainty | Train in environments where models break and judgment matters. |
| Industry Access | Interact with fund managers, fintech founders, regulators, and operators globally. |
| Portfolio of Work | Graduate with tangible outputs: products, strategies, reports, and systems. |
| Career Optionality | Move into investing, fintech, AI roles, or build your own firm. |
Is This Program Right For You?
| FAQ | Answer |
|---|---|
| Do I need prior finance knowledge? | No. You will build from fundamentals, but you must be willing to engage with real-world complexity early. |
| Is this math-heavy? | Yes, but applied. Math is taught as a tool for decision-making, not abstraction. |
| Is this more finance or AI? | It is finance-first, with AI deeply integrated where it creates real leverage. |
| Will I actually manage money? | Yes. Under supervision and structure, but decisions and accountability are real. |
| Is this risky compared to traditional programs? | Yes. That is the point. You will operate before you feel fully ready. |
Career Pathways
| Path | Examples |
|---|---|
| Investor / Asset Manager | Hedge funds, family offices, portfolio management |
| FinTech Builder | Payments, lending, infrastructure, AI-driven finance products |
| Quant / AI in Finance | Algorithmic trading, risk modeling, credit systems |
| Private Markets | Venture capital, private equity, emerging market investing |
| Entrepreneur | Build and scale financial or AI-driven ventures |
| Graduate Study | Finance, Financial Engineering, AI, Economics |
Term 1: India
Where financial services meet a billion people. India is the world's largest democracy and one of the fastest-growing major economies, a place where fintech didn't just disrupt banking, it replaced it for 500 million people. UPI processes more digital transactions per month than Visa and Mastercard combined globally. You'll learn finance not as a textbook abstraction but as a living system operating at civilizational scale, in a country where a vegetable vendor and a hedge fund manager both use the same payment app. This is the best possible place to understand money, markets, and what financial inclusion actually means.
| Course Code | Concentration | Course Name | Course Overview | Core Understanding | Credits |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CAPSTONE 101 | - | Build FinTech for the Unbanked | Design, prototype, and pilot a non-custodial financial tool targeting an underserved segment of India's population: a financial literacy app, a savings tracker, a loan eligibility screener, or a micro-insurance awareness platform. The product must not hold, move, or advise on real money directly; instead it should connect users to existing licensed institutions (banks, MFIs, NBFCs, or SEBI-registered entities) via APIs, referrals, or structured onboarding flows. Partner with at least one local NGO or microfinance institution. | - | 6 |
| FTM 101 | Financial Theory & Markets | Foundations of Finance & Capital Markets | An introduction to how financial systems work: money, banking, credit, capital markets, and the instruments that make economies run. Understand stocks, bonds, currencies, and commodities. Study India's financial architecture (RBI, SEBI, stock exchanges) as a live case study. How markets price assets, how capital flows, and why financial systems exist. | How Does Money Actually Move Around the World? | 5 |
| QMA 101 | Quantitative Methods & AI | Mathematics for Finance | Build the quantitative foundation every finance professional needs: functions, sequences, algebra, introductory calculus, partial derivatives, and the mathematical logic behind compounding, discounting, and optimization. Introduce vectors, matrices, and the core ideas of linear algebra (dot products, matrix multiplication, and systems of equations) as they appear in portfolio theory, risk models, and financial data. | How Do You Turn Uncertainty into a Number You Can Actually Use? | 5 |
| TFS 101 | Technology & Financial Systems | Introduction to Financial Technology | A landscape course covering how technology has transformed financial services. Study the architecture of fintech: mobile payments, digital banking, API-first financial infrastructure, open banking, and India's own technology stack: Aadhaar, UPI, ONDC, Account Aggregator. | How Did a Country of a Billion People Skip Straight to Digital Money? | 5 |
| CFS 101 | Corporate Finance & Strategy | Financial Accounting | The language of business. Learn to read, construct, and critically analyze financial statements (income statements, balance sheets, and cash flow statements). Master double-entry bookkeeping, accruals, and the accounting standards that underpin every financial decision. | How Do You Know If a Business Is Actually Making Money? | 5 |
| RRE 101 | Risk, Regulation & Ethics | Ethics, Economics & Financial Systems | Explore the moral and economic foundations of financial systems. Why do markets exist? What do they do well and what do they destroy? Study landmark financial crises, the role of regulation, and the ethical obligations of finance professionals, with India's own history of banking crises, financial scams and financial inclusion drives as reference. | How Do You Build a Financial System That Doesn't Eat Itself? | 4 |
Term 2: Dubai
Dubai is where ambition gets funded. The UAE is one of the world's most concentrated pools of sovereign wealth, private capital, and family office money: a global financial hub that has deliberately positioned itself at the crossroads of East and West. DIFC is home to the regional offices of every major bank, asset manager, and fund. This is the term you stop thinking about money abstractly and start thinking about capital. You'll learn investment and portfolio management in a city that built the world's most audacious real estate market entirely on leveraged capital and structured finance.
| Course Code | Concentration | Course Name | Course Overview | Core Understanding | Credits |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CAPSTONE 102 | - | Run a Real Student Investment Portfolio with Live Capital | As a team, manage a real-money portfolio seeded by the college: structured as a formally documented student investment fund under faculty and industry oversight, with a clearly defined Investment Policy Statement and a mandate to invest in publicly listed equities and ETFs across global markets. Screen, research, and select investments using fundamental analysis. Make live buy and sell decisions, track performance weekly, and present attribution reports to an investment committee of professional fund managers every four weeks. | - | 6 |
| FTM 102 | Financial Theory & Markets | Investment Theory & Portfolio Management | Understand the core intellectual framework of modern investing: risk and return, diversification, the Capital Asset Pricing Model, efficient markets, and factor investing. Learn how professional investors think about building portfolios. | How Do the World's Smartest Investors Decide Where to Put Their Money? | 5 |
| QMA 102 | Quantitative Methods & AI | Probability & Statistics for Finance | Build rigorous probabilistic thinking: probability distributions, expected value, variance, covariance, hypothesis testing, and confidence intervals: all through the lens of financial data. Understand how statistics is used and abused in financial decision-making. | How Do You Make Decisions When You Can Never Be Certain? | 5 |
| TFS 102 | Technology & Financial Systems | Data Analysis & Financial Modeling | Learn to work with financial data programmatically. Python for finance: data manipulation with pandas, visualization, building financial models from raw data, and automating reports. Practical, hands-on, and immediately applicable to the capstone. | How Do You Turn a Spreadsheet Into an Insight Machine? | 5 |
| CFS 102 | Corporate Finance & Strategy | Macroeconomics & Global Trade | The macro forces that move markets: GDP, inflation, interest rate cycles, central bank policy, trade balances, currency regimes, and geopolitics. Study the UAE's economic model as a case study: how a resource-rich, trade-dependent economy interfaces with global capital markets, and what that means for investors and asset allocators. | How Does What Happens in a Central Bank Change What Happens in Your Portfolio? | 5 |
| RRE 102 | Risk, Regulation & Ethics | Islamic Finance & Global Capital Structures | Understand the principles, instruments, and global reach of Islamic finance (Sukuk, Murabaha, Ijarah, Musharakah) and why it governs over $3 trillion in assets. Study how different regulatory environments (DIFC, common law, civil law, Shariah-compliant systems) shape capital markets globally. | How Does a Trillion-Dollar Industry Do Finance Without Charging Interest? | 4 |
Term 3: Shanghai
Shanghai is the world's largest trading city and China is the world's second-largest economy. This is the term you study capital markets and quantitative finance seriously, in the city where quants matter and algorithmic trading desks run 24/7 across asset classes. China's financial markets (commodities, equities, bonds, derivatives) are enormous, sophisticated, and distinctly different from the West. You'll also be close to the manufacturing economy that underlies global supply chains, giving you a visceral sense of the real economy that financial markets are supposed to serve.
| Course Code | Concentration | Course Name | Course Overview | Core Understanding | Credits |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CAPSTONE 201 | - | Build and Back-Test an Algorithmic Trading Strategy with Real Market Data | Design, code, and rigorously back-test a systematic trading strategy using real historical market data (equities, commodities, FX, or crypto). The strategy must have a clearly articulated investment thesis, defined risk controls, and statistically credible performance attribution. Present results to a panel of practitioners who will stress-test your assumptions. Bonus: deploy it in paper trading with live market data for the final four weeks. | - | 6 |
| FTM 201 | Financial Theory & Markets | Financial Derivatives & Structured Products | Master the full landscape of financial derivatives: forwards, futures, options, swaps, and structured products. Understand pricing mechanics, Greeks, hedging strategies, and why derivatives exist: the economic rationale, not just the math. Study cases where they created value and where they destroyed it. | How Do You Bet on the Future Without Knowing What It Holds? | 5 |
| QMA 201 | Quantitative Methods & AI | Time Series Econometrics & Stochastic Foundations for Finance | The mathematical and statistical machinery that underpins systematic trading and quantitative finance. Stationarity, autocorrelation, ARIMA models, GARCH volatility models, cointegration, and regime detection. Introduce the foundational ideas of stochastic processes (random walks, mean reversion, and the concept of a Wiener process) building the intuition that will support rigorous stochastic calculus in later terms. Apply these tools directly to financial time series: equities, FX, commodities, and crypto. | How Does a Machine Read the Hidden Patterns in a Price Chart? | 5 |
| TFS 201 | Technology & Financial Systems | Algorithmic Trading & Market Microstructure | Understand how modern markets actually work at the microsecond level: order books, market makers, liquidity, bid-ask spreads, price impact, and high-frequency trading. Build systematic trading strategies from scratch. Understand the technological arms race at the heart of modern capital markets. | How Does a Computer Make a Thousand Trading Decisions Before You Blink? | 5 |
| CFS 201 | Corporate Finance & Strategy | Corporate Finance & Valuation | The engine room of investment banking and corporate decision-making. Capital structure, cost of capital, dividend policy, capital budgeting. Master the three core valuation methodologies: DCF, comparable companies, and precedent transactions. Build models that actually inform decisions. | How Do You Put a Number on What a Business Is Worth? | 5 |
| RRE 201 | Risk, Regulation & Ethics | Market Risk & Quantitative Risk Management | Understand risk the way risk managers do: Value at Risk (VaR), Expected Shortfall, stress testing, scenario analysis, and model risk. Learn the tools that banks use to measure, monitor, and report market risk -- and study the famous cases where those tools catastrophically failed. | How Do the World's Biggest Banks Decide How Much Risk Is Too Much? | 4 |
Term 4: Ghana
African capital markets are the world's most underanalyzed and underinvested, which means they are the world's most interesting. Ghana has one of Africa's most stable financial systems, a functioning stock exchange, a sovereign bond market that international investors watch closely, and a private equity and venture ecosystem that is growing fast. This term you study finance through the lens of a continent where the fundamentals are different: higher risk premia, currency volatility, infrastructure gaps, and an interesting demographic dividend.
| Course Code | Concentration | Course Name | Course Overview | Core Understanding | Credits |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CAPSTONE 202 | - | Build a Fintech Product That Solves a Real Financial Problem for the Ghanaian Community | Design, build, and launch a functional fintech product addressing a genuine gap in Ghana's financial ecosystem. For example, a credit scoring tool for informal businesses, a mobile savings product integrated with Mobile Money (MTN MoMo, Vodafone Cash), a financial data aggregator for SMEs, or an AI-powered loan assessment tool for a licensed MFI. The product must not hold customer funds or provide regulated financial advice directly; instead it must connect to or operate in partnership with a licensed financial institution. Onboard real users, demonstrate measurable utility, and present to a panel of Ghanaian fintech practitioners and investors. | - | 6 |
| FTM 202 | Financial Theory & Markets | Credit Markets & Credit Scoring | Understand how credit markets work from first principles: the mechanics of lending, interest rate pricing, credit spreads, and the yield curve. Study how creditworthiness is assessed (traditional FICO-style scoring, alternative data models), and AI-driven underwriting. Examine how credit markets function differently in emerging economies: thin credit files, informal income, mobile money histories, and the rise of digital lenders across Africa. Study Ghana's own credit market structure and the role of the Credit Reference Bureau. | How Does a Lender Decide in Seconds Whether to Trust You With Their Money? | 5 |
| QMA 202 | Quantitative Methods & AI | Machine Learning for Finance | Apply machine learning to real financial problems: return prediction, credit scoring, fraud detection, NLP on earnings calls, and regime detection. Understand what ML can and cannot do in finance. Work with real financial datasets, handle the peculiarities of financial data (non-stationarity, low signal-to-noise), and build models that are interpretable to practitioners. | How Does a Machine Learn to Predict Markets Better Than Most Humans? | 5 |
| TFS 202 | Technology & Financial Systems | Financial Data Engineering & Infrastructure | Build the data plumbing that financial institutions run on: databases, APIs, real-time data pipelines, time-series databases, and financial data vendors (Bloomberg, Refinitiv). Understand data governance, data quality, and why bad data costs firms billions. Work with Africa-specific data challenges: sparse coverage, inconsistent reporting, currency complexity. | How Do Financial Institutions Turn Oceans of Messy Data Into Decisions Worth Billions? | 5 |
| CFS 202 | Corporate Finance & Strategy | Forensic Accounting & Financial Statement Analysis | Learn to read financial statements the way an investigator does: not just for performance, but for manipulation, misrepresentation, and fraud. Study earnings management, off-balance-sheet structures, channel stuffing, and revenue recognition games. Examine landmark accounting scandals (Enron, Wirecard, Luckin Coffee) and the forensic techniques used to uncover them. Develop the analytical instinct to know when the numbers are too clean to be true. | How Do You Tell the Difference Between a Great Business and a Great Story? | 5 |
| RRE 202 | Risk, Regulation & Ethics | Credit Risk, Sovereign Risk & Financial Crises | Understand credit risk from first principles: probability of default, loss given default, exposure at default, and credit portfolio models. Study sovereign risk in emerging markets: debt sustainability, IMF programs, default and restructuring. Learn from history's greatest financial crises: what broke, why, and what was rebuilt. | How Do You Lend Money to a Country and Know You'll Get It Back? | 4 |
Term 5: United States
Wall Street, Silicon Valley, and every major financial institution in the world either headquartered here or deeply connected to it. By now you have a broad, rigorous foundation in finance and quantitative methods. In Term 5, you go deep into the most advanced and integrated domain of the program: the intersection of investment management, financial technology, and AI. The United States is home to the world's deepest capital markets, most mature regulatory frameworks, and the most sophisticated intersection of finance and technology anywhere on earth.
| Course Code | Concentration | Course Name | Course Overview | Core Understanding | Credits |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CAPSTONE 301 | - | Run a Student Hedge Fund with Real Capital and Institutional Reporting | Operate a fully structured student-run fund with real capital held at a licensed US custodian (Interactive Brokers or equivalent), under the supervision of a registered investment advisor acting as the fund's responsible officer. Define a strategy (long/short equity, global macro, quant, or event-driven), build a formal research process, make live investment decisions, and produce institutional-quality investor letters, risk reports, and attribution analysis every month. | - | 6 |
| FTM 301 | Financial Theory & Markets | Equity Research & Fundamental Analysis | Learn to analyze companies the way the best fundamental investors do: business model analysis, competitive dynamics, management assessment, financial statement forensics, and variant perception. Build complete equity research reports with buy/sell/hold recommendations. | How Do the World's Greatest Investors Find Companies the Market Has Mispriced? | 5 |
| QMA 301 | Quantitative Methods & AI | Stochastic Processes & Financial Mathematics | The mathematical core of quantitative finance: Brownian motion, Ito's lemma, stochastic differential equations, Black-Scholes, and the foundations of derivatives pricing. Understand where the famous formulas come from and what happens when their assumptions break. | How Did a Single Equation Change the Way the World Prices Risk? | 5 |
| TFS 301 | Technology & Financial Systems | AI Systems in Financial Services | Deep dive into how AI is deployed across financial services: credit underwriting, fraud detection, AML surveillance, robo-advisory, algorithmic customer service, and insurance pricing. Study real system architectures, the regulatory constraints on AI in finance, and the ethics of algorithmic decision-making over people's financial lives. Build and evaluate AI-powered financial tools as a practitioner, not just as a theorist. | How Is AI Making Decisions About Your Money and Who Is Accountable When It's Wrong? | 5 |
| CFS 301 | Corporate Finance & Strategy | Private Equity, Venture Capital & Emerging Markets | Understand how private capital works: fund structures, LP/GP dynamics, deal sourcing, due diligence, term sheets, cap tables, and portfolio management. Focus on venture and growth equity: the US ecosystem as the benchmark, and emerging market deal dynamics as the contrast. Study how development finance institutions operate, and how to evaluate businesses with limited financial history. | How Do Investors Make Billion-Dollar Bets on Companies That Don't Yet Exist? | 5 |
| RRE 301 | Risk, Regulation & Ethics | Financial Regulation, Compliance & Market Integrity | Understand the regulatory architecture of global capital markets: SEC, CFTC, FCA, MiFID II, Dodd-Frank. Insider trading, market manipulation, fiduciary duties, and the compliance function. Study famous enforcement cases and understand what it means to operate with integrity in markets where the temptations are enormous. | How Do Financial Regulators Police a Market That Moves Faster Than Any Law? | 4 |
Term 6: Argentina
Argentina has experienced more financial crises per capita than almost any country on earth: hyperinflation, currency controls, sovereign defaults, dollarization experiments, capital flight, and financial improvisation that would be unimaginable in stable economies. And yet, Buenos Aires has one of the most sophisticated financial communities in Latin America, a thriving crypto ecosystem born of necessity, and entrepreneurs who have learned to build businesses that survive 50% annual inflation. This is the term you learn the parts of finance that don't work the way the textbooks say. Risk in its rawest form.
| Course Code | Concentration | Course Name | Course Overview | Core Understanding | Credits |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CAPSTONE 401 | - | Build and Manage a Multi-Asset Portfolio Through a Currency Crisis | Over 16 weeks in Buenos Aires, manage a real diversified portfolio denominated across multiple currencies and asset classes (including Argentine pesos, USD, hard assets, and crypto) navigating real inflationary and currency risk. Build a complete risk management framework, conduct weekly investment committee meetings, and produce a final attribution report explaining every decision made under real market stress. The portfolio will be evaluated not just on returns, but on the quality of risk management and decision-making under uncertainty. | - | 6 |
| FTM 401 | Financial Theory & Markets | Alternative Investments: Crypto & Commodities | Beyond stocks, bonds and real estate: commodities and crypto assets. Understand how these asset classes behave, how to value it, what role it plays in a portfolio, and why Argentina (with its parallel peso markets, peso-denominated bonds, and booming crypto adoption) is the world's best classroom for alternative assets. | How Do Smart Investors Make Money When Traditional Markets Fall Apart? | 5 |
| QMA 401 | Quantitative Methods & AI | Advanced Portfolio Construction & Factor Investing | Go deep on quantitative portfolio management: factor models (value, momentum, quality, low volatility), portfolio optimization under constraints, risk parity, and the practical challenges of running quantitative strategies with real money. Understand why factors work, when they stop working, and how to construct portfolios that are robust rather than just backtested. | How Do the World's Largest Asset Managers Use Math to Beat the Market -- and Why Does It Stop Working When Everyone Does It? | 5 |
| TFS 401 | Technology & Financial Systems | Blockchain, DeFi & Financial Infrastructure | The technical and economic architecture of decentralized finance: smart contracts, AMMs, lending protocols, stablecoins, tokenization of real-world assets, and the regulatory frontier of crypto. Study Argentina's own crypto economy (USDT as a savings instrument, crypto payroll, and DeFi) as a hedge against the state. | How Did a Technology Built to Replace Banks End Up Being Used Most by People the Banks Already Failed? | 5 |
| CFS 401 | Corporate Finance & Strategy | Game Theory & Strategic Decision-Making in Finance | The mathematics and logic of strategic interaction: Nash equilibria, dominant strategies, repeated games, signaling, mechanism design, and auction theory. Apply game theory to the financial world: M&A negotiation and bid strategy, sovereign debt restructuring standoffs, competitive dynamics between financial institutions, crypto token mechanism design, and the strategic behavior of central banks and regulators. Argentina's history of debt renegotiations and IMF standoffs provides a live, recurring case study in multi-player strategic games with enormous stakes. | How Do You Make the Best Decision When Every Other Player Is Also Trying to Outthink You? | 5 |
| RRE 401 | Risk, Regulation & Ethics | Behavioral Finance & the Psychology of Financial Decisions | Why do smart people make terrible financial decisions? The cognitive biases, emotional patterns, and social dynamics that drive market bubbles, investor panic, and the persistent gap between theory and behavior. Understand prospect theory, loss aversion, herding, overconfidence, and the lessons of Argentina's repeated boom-bust cycles as mass behavioral finance experiments. | Why Do Brilliant People Keep Making the Same Financial Mistakes Over and Over Again? | 4 |