Finance is central to many of the critical activities that make up our free-market economy. The Courses in Finance Area provide students with an understanding of the financial and legal dimensions of business, including a strong foundation in corporate finance, investments, money and capital markets, and personal financial planning.
The courses in the Area give students in-depth exposure to the concepts, conceptual framework, techniques, and theories that shape the global economic environment. It provides students with a context for analyzing and understanding financial trends in the local, national, and international levels. The financial sector is a diverse and fascinating career field. As businesses, non-profit organizations, and government agencies grow, their need for experienced financial professionals grows. The finance courses impart those skillsets to the students that empowers them to get placements in the field of investment management, Equity research, in a diverse field of the financial sector, or to develop their independent business initiatives. Courses in this Area emphasize Content Building, Superior Decision-Making Skills, and Developing a Robust Character.
Finance is truly anchored in Liberal Education, drawing inputs from diverse subjects like Economics, Mathematics, sciences, Psychology, law, etc. The courses seek to “Connect the Dots,” connecting seemingly disparate sets of data into meaningful information. The approach is to build the students' ability to use the left and right sides of the Brain, "Building a Story with Numbers".
Finance, as a field of study, has been around for centuries and has evolved, incorporating the dynamic nature of the real world. Modern developments in Trade, Markets, Technology, etc. are continuously integrated into the finance discipline courses. Any student who takes up Finance as a Major or Minor subject will need to develop a passion for the courses and keep oneself abreast with the latest developments across various sectors in the global economy.
SPECIALISATION AIMS
The Finance Major and Minor intends to:
- Provide a thorough learning in multiple areas of knowledge through the core courses in the area of Business Management, History and Management Information system
- Enable the students to develop skill sets primarily communication and other soft skills relevant to the area of Business management.
- Equip the students with the analytical frameworks so as to enable them to understand and perform an analysis of the financial statements and the economic environment.
- Enable students to assess the Business environment in a global context and understand the financial issues influencing business decisions globally.
- Equip the students with subject matter expertise in the domain of corporate finance and Investment Management.
- Enable the students to develop functional expertise in the key verticals of Insurance and Banking.
- Enable the students to assess the nuances of the stock market and perform a fundamental and technical analysis with respect to shares and securities.
- Inculcate in students the capacity to apply basic models of asset valuation.
- Enable students to demonstrate analytical skills by applying empirical methods through an independent project in the area of domain.
- Provide an opportunity to students to pursue further studies in any relevant area of Business Management.
MAJOR OUTCOMES: After successful completion of the Major, the student will be able to:
- Demonstrate basic knowledge in accounting, economics, finance, management, Entrepreneurship, and marketing in application of concepts and theories.
- Integrate the concepts of the core areas of business and apply it in various contexts.
- Understand the importance of the ethics in business activities.
- Demonstrate the knowledge of the financial services provided by financial institutions
- Demonstrate the knowledge of the regulatory environment of finance
- Distinguish between various types of risk and calculate returns given appropriate risk measures
- Demonstrate knowledge of financial instruments and their markets
- Demonstrate understanding and analysis of Financial Statements
- Demonstrate understanding of the costs of capital and recommend capital budgeting decisions using the cost of capital.
- Demonstrate ability to calculate Multiple Financial Parameters/Decision-Making Frameworks and model building
- Demonstrate the ability to analyse the tradeoff in the determination of a company’s optimal capital structure and dividend Policy
- Demonstrate the knowledge of financial markets, its relevance to Society
- Demonstrate the knowledge of regulatory and taxation aspects of the economy
- Demonstrate ability to develop multidisciplinary approach to problem solving
MINOR OUTCOMES: After successful completion of the Minor, the student will be able to:
- Calculate time value of money problems.
- Distinguish between various types of risk and calculate returns given appropriate risk measures.
- Analyse annual reports and Financial statements
- Calculate financial ratios using data from a firm’s financial statements and explain their significance
- Understand the nature of Working Capital, its computation and Financing
- Calculate the costs of capital and solve capital budgeting problems using the cost of capital.
- Describe the tradeoff model to determining a company’s optimal capital structure and dividend Policy
- Distinguish between various types of risk and calculate returns given appropriate risk measures
COURSES (CORE AND ELECTIVE)
37 MAJOR COURSES
| Introduction to Operations Research | Financial Markets, Instruments and Institutions | Financial Analytics |
| Introduction to Finance and Accounting | Legal Aspects of Business | Micro-Finance |
| Consumer & Markets | Design Thinking for Managers | Special Topics in Finance |
| Introduction to People Management | Enterprise Risk Management | Mergers and Acquisitions |
| Introduction to Entrepreneurship & Family Business | Business Ethics and Corporate Governance | Fixed Income Securities |
| Introduction to Spreadsheet Modeling | Investment Analysis | Special Topics in Finance |
| Introduction to Quantitative Methods | Financial Statement Analysis | Project Finance |
| Managerial Economics | Banking and Insurance | FinTech |
| Accounting for Managers | Negotiations | Derivatives and Risk Management |
| Marketing Management | Special Topics in Finance | Special Topics in Finance |
| Organisational Behaviour | Business Innovation, Entrepreneurship and Strategy | Graduation Project |
| Research Methods for Managers | Taxation | |
| Financial Management | Audit and Assurance |
Introduction to Operations Research
The course exposes students to fundamental optimization procedures and techniques to attain skills at structuring business problems and modelling them as a mathematical program, Microsoft Excel to solve such models, interpret solutions and use the solutions to answer the business problem. The focus of this course will be on applications of quantitative methods in modelling business situations.
Introduction to Finance and Accounting
The course is aimed at baptising the students to the vocabularies of accounting theories and practices. Begining with the accounting concepts, introducing the basic tenets in maintaining the books of accounts, the course finally culminates into the preparation of the financial statements like Income statement, Balance Sheet as well as the Cash flow statement. It also covers the Bank reconcilation statement and Bills of Exchange
Consumer & Markets
This course provides a conceptual framework to the students to understand the various dimensions of marketing as a disciline. It focuses on exploring various aspects of marketing, markets, consumers, their shopping behaviour and motivations. It gives broad understanding of the exciting world of Shop, Shopping and Shopper.
Introduction to People Management
The course familiarizes students with the history and functions of management. It gives an overview of the various functions of human resource management and the concepts of organizational behaviour. It prepares students to go deeper into the area of people management equipping them with the basic background knowledge.
Introduction to Entrepreneurship & Family Business
This course introduces students to entrepreneurship and family businesses. It provides an overview on how they come into being, their perspective on the ecosystem, their mindset and how they manage their enterprises.
Introduction to Spreadsheet Modeling
This course deals with the use of the Spreadsheet to solve managerial problems. It merely highlights the use of Microsoft Excel as an aid in formulating business problems and invoking appropriate functions to resolve them.
Introduction to Quantitative Methods
This course is designed to give undergraduate students an introduction to decision making. The use of quantitative techniques is increasingly being adopted in all areas of human endeavour. The need to collect, analyze and interpret mathematical output is increasingly being appreciated for arriving at conclusions or in strategic decision making. This course will deal with fundamental concepts required to model, analyse and solve quantitative problems arising in any discipline. A student undertaking this course can have little to no formal introduction to mathematics and statistics at the higher secondary level.
Managerial Economics
This course provides a foundation of economic theories and models for use in managerial decision-making. The course provides students with an overview of theories of demand, supply, production and competition and equips them with the tools and techniques to make effective economic decisions under different business environments.
Accounting for Managers
Financial accounting provides the means of recording and reporting financial information in a business. Accounting plays a vital role as an information system for monitoring, problem solving and decision-making. This course provides the fundamentals of Financial Accounting and goes on to demonstrate how accounting fits into the overall business environment of an organization. In addition to this, Management Accounting systems, which have a strong internal focus can be effective tools in providing information that is useful in decision making at all levels in the organization. Management accountants play a strategic role in developing and providing both financial and non-financial information that is critical to the success of an organization.
Marketing Management
This course provides a conceptual framework to the students to understand the function of marketing in an organization. The course helps students to apply the marketing concepts and theories to solve case studies and projects. The course makes them vigilant of the marketing happenings in the real world and therefore importance of creating effective marketing strategies.
Organisational Behaviour
This course is an introduction to organizational behaviour for undergraduates. It discusses behaviour in organizations at individual, group & organizational levels and provides an understanding of the underlying aspects that drive behavior. It provides insights into the different theories and their application in the organizational context. It also enables students to understand theutilisation of different tools and practices in directing individual actions towards organizational objectives.
Research Methods for Managers
The objective of the course is to enable students to understand the role and importance of research in improving managerial decisions when faced with uncertainty. Research methods are applied in all functional areas of business viz. operation management, accounting, finance and marketing. The issue facing managers is not a shortage of information but how to use the available information to make better decisions. Learning this course helps students recognise that data are inherently variable and that the identification measurement, control, and reduction of variation provide opportunities for quality improvement.
Financial Management
This course in Financial Management provides a detailed understanding of the Finance Function and its interrelationship with other areas of Business. It seeks to develop the foundation for financial management concepts. It primarily helps the student to understand how businesses make investment, Financing, working capital management and dividend decisions and what are the key factors that influence these decisions.
Financial Markets, Instruments and Institutions
Financial Markets and Institutions course is expected to provide a comprehensive view of the financial markets and financial Institutions in India, their functioning, and regulatory systems that are in place to ensure smooth running and management of these markets. This course is expected to familiarize the learner with various participants in Financial Markets including Financial Intermediaries and also to some extent various types of financial instruments available for investment, speculation and arbitrage.
Legal Aspects of Business
This course introduces the student to legal system, principles and provisions of various commercial laws that apply to businesses. The course will enable students to appreciate that a robust legal system of the country fosters condusive business environment along with good corporate governance. The course provides broad information about various laws like companies act, contract act, intellectual property laws, insolvency and bankruptcy code, competition laws, etc. that affect businesses. Students would get an opportunity to understand the implications of law and dispute resolution mechanisms through various real life case studies.
Design Thinking for Managers
Design Thinking (DT) is a powerful tool to tackle the unstructured & the unknown. DT is a ‘human centered’ approach to problem solving which emerged at Stanford in the 1960’s primarily as a systematic, immersive approach to product design. In recent years, it was found that these approaches can be extended to a wide category of ill-structured, real world problems, both in emerging and developed markets alike. DT is getting increasingly popular not only across top corporates, but also in rural, semi-urban and underserved sections of society. Given the diversity of challenges that we face today, it therefore becomes necessary to have thinkers and doers who can focus on addressing such challenges. DT helps in building those capabilities.
Enterprise Risk Management
Risk management has traditionally been associated with financial institutions, banking, and insurance businesses. In today's business world, whether large or small, risk management is a crucial success factor. Enterprise risk management encompasses risk-based decision making in its essence. The increased likelihood of a startup's survival and the development of a resource-efficient growth model can be ascribed to risk-based decision making. This course's objectives are to increase participants' risk awareness and instil a culture of risk management. In this comprehensive course, students will gain an in-depth understanding of enterprise risk management (ERM).
Business Ethics and Corporate Governance
The course aims to develop in the student a clear perspective on the role and responsibilities of business in society. It helps the student understand the role of ethics in business. It also dwells on corporate governance frameworks and their relevance to contemporary business environment.
Investment Analysis
This course is an introduction to the world of investment analysis and involves a study of the investment environment and classical and modern security analysis. This course is constructed in such a manner so as to expose the student to the basic analytical techniques within the investments area. Focusing both on individual securities and on portfolios of securities, this course describes and explains the techniques, vehicles, and strategies for implementing investment goals in light of risk return tradeoffs.
Financial Statement Analysis
The course aims at providing a systematic framework for using financial statements in business analysis. It focuses on understanding the uses and the limitations of financial statements, issues relating to adherence with accounting standards and interpretations of accounting standards with respect to their purpose and the disclosure requirements. This course will enable the students to carry out fundamental analysis of the health of a company through their annual reports. It would further equip them to understand various financial adjustments to be carried out to the reported numbers. Students will get exposure to different business models which would enable them to appreciate and follow the saying, “Never invest in a business that you cannot understand”- Warren Buffet.
Banking and Insurance
The course is designed to provide a foundation to understand of the nuances of the business of Banking and Insurance including the regulatory and supervisory issues governing their functions. Topics have been specifically curated for inclusion in the course so as to impart a holistic insight into the operational and decision making challenges in the space of Banking and Insurance. The course aims to construct a secure knowledge base of the BBA students to foster their future career plans in the domain of Banking and Insurance.
Negotiations
Negotiation is a commonly used and vital tool to make decisions in the organizational context. Based on the position and role of an employee, he or she has to engage in some kind of negotiation at one point of time or the other. Negotiation is driven by assumptions, perceptions and understanding about human behavior. This course would be designed to familiarize future professionals and managers about when to engage in negotiation, how to understand the negotiation partner, what negotiation technique to use at what point in time and how to develop negotiation skills.
Business Innovation, Entrepreneurship and Strategy
In a rapidly changing business environment, Innovation has been recognised as one of the key drivers of competitive advantage. This course is an introduction to the concept of innovaton for corporate managers and entrepreneurs.
Taxation
This course introduces the student to Indian Income Tax legislation and practice, related to the filing of personal and corporate income tax returns. It further helps students to understand how effective tax planning is done business entities.
Audit and Assurance
Every society's economic decisions must be founded on the available information at the time the decision is made. If decisions are to reflect the decision makers' intentions, the information used in the decision-making process must be reliable. The primary objective of auditing is to determine the reliability of the accounting records and income statements. The goal is to ensure that the financial statements accurately reflect the business and its transactions.
Financial Analytics
This course provides the foundation for financial analytics used in business and FinTech applications. The objective of this course is for students to gain experience in analyzing financial data using modern machine learning techniques, statistical methods, and prediction models. Students will develop computational skills to perform data analysis using a modern statistical programming environment, and apply these skills to address a range of problems encountered by business firms, including those in the FinTech industry. The topics discussed include an introduction to Python/R language, visualization of financial data, cluster analysis, simple and multiple linear regression, classification models, Time series data. Students will have hands-on experience in the development of data analytics applications to analyze real world financial problems.
Micro-Finance
Microfinance is a paradigm shift in the approach to poverty alleviation and economic development. It has been ushered as one of the most effective tools to combat poverty through loans, grants, insurance and other financial products offered to the poorest of the global poor around the world. It has also emerged as a model for the empowerment of women and other disadvantaged citizens. It fosters social entrepreneurship, bringing creative business and financial strategies and tools to complex social and economic problems. To expand finance and to ensure sustainability, microfinance institutions are becoming sophisticated financial institutions that structure, distribute and then finance a growing array of financial products and services to the poor. The course explores why and how microfinance operations have grown to provide financial services to poor and low-income people on a sustainable basis including current challenges and debates in the realm of microfinance The approach will involve case studies, hands-on learning, and real-world problem-solving exercises to assist students acquire the skills necessary for the profession.
Mergers and Acquisitions
The primary objective of the course is to enable the student comprehensively understand mergers and acquisitions (M&A) from a corporate executive's perspective. The course would deal with most of the significant aspects of the acquisition process like corporate strategy, valuation, due diligence, financing decisions, transaction structures, restructuring options, takeover defences and integration. The course would involve usage of cases and real-world applications. Case studies, hands-on learning, and real-world problem-solving exercises will be included in the pedagogy to assist students obtain the skills needed for employment.
Fixed Income Securities
Fixed income securities constitute a significant portion of the capital market and represent the entire money market. It is imperative for a student of Finance to get adequate exposure to this topic, from the perspective of a future career in Finance. Derivatives, fixed income products, and foreign exchange are inextricably linked and a student specializing in Finance should ensure that he or she gets adequate exposure to all these areas. This course, as the name suggests, deals with the entire gamut of Fixed Income Securities as well as derivatives with such securities as the underlying. The course will endeavor to deal with the recent developments in the Indian fixed income space, specifically, by looking at recent debt-financing tools, e.g., international bonds, mezzanines and high yield bonds.
The course will talk about select approaches to building yield curve, concepts of yield spreads, the impact of credit risk and illiquidity on bond pricing, valuation of bonds with embedded options, risk management in the case of non-parallel shifts in the yield curve, indexing approach to bond portfolio construction, etc.
Also, a focus of the course will remain on the interest rate derivatives: their valuation, applications in trading and hedging risk associated with investing in bonds using these instruments.
At the completion of this course, the students should have developed a good understanding of the Fixed Income Markets, issues related to Fixed Income Markets, Fixed Income Products and derivative contracts on such products. Case studies, hands-on learning, and real-world problem-solving exercises will be included in the pedagogy to assist students obtain the skills needed for employment.
Project Finance
Globally, Project finance has increasingly become a popular basis to finance capital intensive projects in industries such as airport, road, power, energy, chemicals, and mining. Not all projects are, however, amenable to Project finance. This increasingly crucial financial technique relies on nonrecourse, risk-mitigated cash flows of a specific project, not the balance sheet or corporate guarantee of a sponsor, to support the funding, using a broad-based set of inter-disciplinary skills. Through this course, students would get an in-depth understanding of markets, technology, sponsors, off-takers, contracts, operators, and financial structuring. They would also understand the key elements that support project financing and how an investor or lender can get comfortable with making a loan or investment. Case studies, hands-on learning, and real-world problem-solving exercises will be included in the pedagogy to assist students obtain the skills needed for employment.
FinTech
The FinTech revolution is rapidly transforming the financial industry. The use of digital technologies is the new norm, and together with regulatory and market changes it is creating a revolution. The main objective of the course is to introduce students to fintech, the area of business activity where finance intersects with information technology to improve and automate the delivery and use of financial services. The course will present traditional models of money and the role of banks for payments and funding, allowing students to better understand the innovations peer-to-peer lending brings. Distributed ledger technologies like Blockchain, Cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and distributed applications based on smart contract systems are two major potential game-changers for the financial services industry. The course will introduce students to the functioning of a Blockchain, such that they can better understand what blockchain-based applications can bring to the finance industry as well as their intrinsic limitations. The approach will involve case studies, hands-on learning, and real-world problem-solving exercises to assist students acquire the skills necessary for the profession.
Derivatives and Risk Management
This course in Finance provides a detailed understanding of the derivatives and their use as effective tools for diversification of investment, managing financial risks. The student would also learn how to use derivatives in other areas such as portfolio management, wealth management, etc. It seeks to develop the foundation for the concepts of risk management. It primarily helps the student to understand how investors and businesses could protect the value of their investments / assets in varying conditions / turbulance in financial markets. The pedagogy will include case-studies, hands-on learning, and real-world problem-solving activities that helps in equipping the student with the skills required in the workforce.
28 MINOR COURSES
| Introduction to Operations Research | Financial Markets, Instruments and Institutions | Special Topics in Finance |
| Introduction to Finance and Accounting | Enterprise Risk Management | Mergers and Acquisitions |
| Consumer & Markets | Investment Analysis | Fixed Income Securities |
| Introduction to People Management | Financial Statement Analysis | Special Topics in Finance |
| Introduction to Entrepreneurship & Family Business | Banking and Insurance | Project Finance |
| Introduction to Spreadsheet Modeling | Special Topics in Finance | FinTech |
| Introduction to Quantitative Methods | Taxation | Derivatives and Risk Management |
| Managerial Economics | Audit and Assurance | Special Topics in Finance |
| Accounting for Managers | Financial Analytics | |
| Financial Management | Micro-Finance |
Introduction to Operations Research
The course exposes students to fundamental optimization procedures and techniques to attain skills at structuring business problems and modelling them as a mathematical program, Microsoft Excel to solve such models, interpret solutions and use the solutions to answer the business problem. The focus of this course will be on applications of quantitative methods in modelling business situations.
Introduction to Finance and Accounting
The course is aimed at baptising the students to the vocabularies of accounting theories and practices. Begining with the accounting concepts, introducing the basic tenets in maintaining the books of accounts, the course finally culminates into the preparation of the financial statements like Income statement, Balance Sheet as well as the Cash flow statement. It also covers the Bank reconcilation statement and Bills of Exchange
Consumer & Markets
This course provides a conceptual framework to the students to understand the various dimensions of marketing as a disciline. It focuses on exploring various aspects of marketing, markets, consumers, their shopping behaviour and motivations. It gives broad understanding of the exciting world of Shop, Shopping and Shopper.
Introduction to People Management
The course familiarizes students with the history and functions of management. It gives an overview of the various functions of human resource management and the concepts of organizational behaviour. It prepares students to go deeper into the area of people management equipping them with the basic background knowledge.
Introduction to Entrepreneurship & Family Business
This course introduces students to entrepreneurship and family businesses. It provides an overview on how they come into being, their perspective on the ecosystem, their mindset and how they manage their enterprises.
Introduction to Spreadsheet Modeling
This course deals with the use of the Spreadsheet to solve managerial problems. It merely highlights the use of Microsoft Excel as an aid in formulating business problems and invoking appropriate functions to resolve them.
Introduction to Quantitative Methods
This course is designed to give undergraduate students an introduction to decison making. The use of quantitative techniques is increasingly being adopted in all areas of human endeavour. The need to collect, analyze and interpret mathematical output is increasingly being appreciated for arriving at conclusions or in strategic decision making. This course will deal with fundamental concepts required to model, analyse and solve quantitative problems arising in any discipline. A student undertaking this course can have little to no formal introduction to mathematics and statistics at the higher secondary level.
Managerial Economics
This course provides a foundation of economic theories and models for use in managerial decision-making. The course provides students with an overview of theories of demand, supply, production and competition and equips them with the tools and techniques to make effective economic decisions under different business environments.
Accounting for Managers
Financial accounting provides the means of recording and reporting financial information in a business. Accounting plays a vital role as an information system for monitoring, problem solving and decision-making. This course provides the fundamentals of Financial Accounting and goes on to demonstrate how accounting fits into the overall business environment of an organization. In addition to this, Management Accounting systems, which have a strong internal focus can be effective tools in providing information that is useful in decision making at all levels in the organization. Management accountants play a strategic role in developing and providing both financial and non-financial information that is critical to the success of an organization.
Financial Management
This course in Financial Management provides a detailed understanding of the Finance Function and its interrelationship with other areas of Business. It seeks to develop the foundation for financial management concepts. It primarily helps the student to understand how businesses make investment, Financing, working capital management and dividend decisions and what are the key factors that influence these decisions.
Financial Markets, Instruments and Institutions
Financial Markets and Institutions course is expected to provide a comprehensive view of the financial markets and financial Institutions in India, their functioning, and regulatory systems that are in place to ensure smooth running and management of these markets. This course is expected to familiarize the learner with various participants in Financial Markets including Financial Intermediaries and also to some extent various types of financial instruments available for investment, speculation and arbitrage.
Enterprise Risk Management
Risk management has traditionally been associated with financial institutions, banking, and insurance businesses. In today's business world, whether large or small, risk management is a crucial success factor. Enterprise risk management encompasses risk-based decision making in its essence. The increased likelihood of a startup's survival and the development of a resource-efficient growth model can be ascribed to risk-based decision making. This course's objectives are to increase participants' risk awareness and instil a culture of risk management. In this comprehensive course, students will gain an in-depth understanding of enterprise risk management (ERM).
Investment Analysis
This course is an introduction to the world of investment analysis and involves a study of the investment environment and classical and modern security analysis. This course is constructed in such a manner so as to expose the student to the basic analytical techniques within the investments area. Focusing both on individual securities and on portfolios of securities, this course describes and explains the techniques, vehicles, and strategies for implementing investment goals in light of risk return tradeoffs.
Financial Statement Analysis
The course aims at providing a systematic framework for using financial statements in business analysis. It focuses on understanding the uses and the limitations of financial statements, issues relating to adherence with accounting standards and interpretations of accounting standards with respect to their purpose and the disclosure requirements. This course will enable the students to carry out fundamental analysis of the health of a company through their annual reports. It would further equip them to understand various financial adjustments to be carried out to the reported numbers. Students will get exposure to different business models which would enable them to appreciate and follow the saying, “Never invest in a business that you cannot understand”- Warren Buffet.
Banking and Insurance
The course is designed to provide a foundation to understand of the nuances of the business of Banking and Insurance including the regulatory and supervisory issues governing their functions. Topics have been specifically curated for inclusion in the course so as to impart a holistic insight into the operational and decision making challenges in the space of Banking and Insurance. The course aims to construct a secure knowledge base of the BBA students to foster their future career plans in the domain of Banking and Insurance.
Taxation
This course introduces the student to Indian Income Tax legislation and practice, related to the filing of personal and corporate income tax returns. It further helps students to understand how effective tax planning is done business entities.
Audit and Assurance
Every society's economic decisions must be founded on the available information at the time the decision is made. If decisions are to reflect the decision makers' intentions, the information used in the decision-making process must be reliable. The primary objective of auditing is to determine the reliability of the accounting records and income statements. The goal is to ensure that the financial statements accurately reflect the business and its transactions.
Financial Analytics
This course provides the foundation for financial analytics used in business and FinTech applications. The objective of this course is for students to gain experience in analyzing financial data using modern machine learning techniques, statistical methods, and prediction models. Students will develop computational skills to perform data analysis using a modern statistical programming environment, and apply these skills to address a range of problems encountered by business firms, including those in the FinTech industry. The topics discussed include an introduction to Python/R language, visualization of financial data, cluster analysis, simple and multiple linear regression, classification models, Time series data. Students will have hands-on experience in the development of data analytics applications to analyze real world financial problems.
Micro-Finance
Microfinance is a paradigm shift in the approach to poverty alleviation and economic development. It has been ushered as one of the most effective tools to combat poverty through loans, grants, insurance and other financial products offered to the poorest of the global poor around the world. It has also emerged as a model for the empowerment of women and other disadvantaged citizens. It fosters social entrepreneurship, bringing creative business and financial strategies and tools to complex social and economic problems. To expand finance and to ensure sustainability, microfinance institutions are becoming sophisticated financial institutions that structure, distribute and then finance a growing array of financial products and services to the poor. The course explores why and how microfinance operations have grown to provide financial services to poor and low-income people on a sustainable basis including current challenges and debates in the realm of microfinance The approach will involve case studies, hands-on learning, and real-world problem-solving exercises to assist students acquire the skills necessary for the profession.
Mergers and Acquisitions
The primary objective of the course is to enable the student comprehensively understand mergers and acquisitions (M&A) from a corporate executive's perspective. The course would deal with most of the significant aspects of the acquisition process like corporate strategy, valuation, due diligence, financing decisions, transaction structures, restructuring options, takeover defences and integration. The course would involve usage of cases and real-world applications. Case studies, hands-on learning, and real-world problem-solving exercises will be included in the pedagogy to assist students obtain the skills needed for employment.
Fixed Income Securities
Fixed income securities constitute a significant portion of the capital market and represent the entire money market. It is imperative for a student of Finance to get adequate exposure to this topic, from the perspective of a future career in Finance. Derivatives, fixed income products, and foreign exchange are inextricably linked and a student specializing in Finance should ensure that he or she gets adequate exposure to all these areas. This course, as the name suggests, deals with the entire gamut of Fixed Income Securities as well as derivatives with such securities as the underlying. The course will endeavor to deal with the recent developments in the Indian fixed income space, specifically, by looking at recent debt-financing tools, e.g., international bonds, mezzanines and high yield bonds.
The course will talk about select approaches to building yield curve, concepts of yield spreads, the impact of credit risk and illiquidity on bond pricing, valuation of bonds with embedded options, risk management in the case of non-parallel shifts in the yield curve, indexing approach to bond portfolio construction, etc.
Also, a focus of the course will remain on the interest rate derivatives: their valuation, applications in trading and hedging risk associated with investing in bonds using these instruments.
At the completion of this course, the students should have developed a good understanding of the Fixed Income Markets, issues related to Fixed Income Markets, Fixed Income Products and derivative contracts on such products. Case studies, hands-on learning, and real-world problem-solving exercises will be included in the pedagogy to assist students obtain the skills needed for employment.
Project Finance
Globally, Project finance has increasingly become a popular basis to finance capital intensive projects in industries such as airport, road, power, energy, chemicals, and mining. Not all projects are, however, amenable to Project finance. This increasingly crucial financial technique relies on nonrecourse, risk-mitigated cash flows of a specific project, not the balance sheet or corporate guarantee of a sponsor, to support the funding, using a broad-based set of inter-disciplinary skills. Through this course, students would get an in-depth understanding of markets, technology, sponsors, off-takers, contracts, operators, and financial structuring. They would also understand the key elements that support project financing and how an investor or lender can get comfortable with making a loan or investment. Case studies, hands-on learning, and real-world problem-solving exercises will be included in the pedagogy to assist students obtain the skills needed for employment.
FinTech
The FinTech revolution is rapidly transforming the financial industry. The use of digital technologies is the new norm, and together with regulatory and market changes it is creating a revolution. The main objective of the course is to introduce students to fintech, the area of business activity where finance intersects with information technology to improve and automate the delivery and use of financial services. The course will present traditional models of money and the role of banks for payments and funding, allowing students to better understand the innovations peer-to-peer lending brings. Distributed ledger technologies like Blockchain, Cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and distributed applications based on smart contract systems are two major potential game-changers for the financial services industry. The course will introduce students to the functioning of a Blockchain, such that they can better understand what blockchain-based applications can bring to the finance industry as well as their intrinsic limitations. The approach will involve case studies, hands-on learning, and real-world problem-solving exercises to assist students acquire the skills necessary for the profession.
Derivatives and Risk Management
This course in Finance provides a detailed understanding of the derivatives and their use as effective tools for diversification of investment, managing financial risks. The student would also learn how to use derivatives in other areas such as portfolio management, wealth management, etc. It seeks to develop the foundation for the concepts of risk management. It primarily helps the student to understand how investors and businesses could protect the value of their investments / assets in varying conditions / turbulance in financial markets. The pedagogy will include case-studies, hands-on learning, and real-world problem-solving activities that helps in equipping the student with the skills required in the workforce.