FinTech For Dummies®

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Table of Contents

1. Cover
2. Introduction
   1. About This Book
   2. Foolish Assumptions
   3. Icons Used in This Book
   4. Beyond the Book
   5. Where to Go from Here
3. Part 1: Getting to Know FinTech
   1. Chapter 1: Navigating the FinTech Landscape
      1. What Is FinTech, Anyway?
      2. Analyzing FinTech’s Dimensions
      3. Understanding What Has Changed in FinTech
      4. Highlighting the Size of Global FinTech
      5. Discovering a Few Important FinTech Terms
   2. Chapter 2: Understanding What’s Disrupting the Financial Industry (and Why)
      1. Providing Trust and Value
      2. Weighing Wall Street against Silicon Valley: Where Disruptors Live
      3. Examining the Role of BigTech
      4. Understanding Where the Disruptions Are Happening
      5. Looking for the Opportunities
   3. Chapter 3: The Role of Regulation in FinTech
      1. Supervising FinTech
      2. Examining Vendor Risk Issues
      3. Introducing the Regulators
      4. Investigating Regulatory Changes
      5. Highlighting RegTech Opportunities
4. Part 2: Learning the Technology
   1. Chapter 4: Defining the Tech Underpinning FinTech
      1. Finding a Fix in FinTech
      2. Creating API Strategies
      3. Understanding Event-Driven Software
      4. Building on Agile: Microservices and More
      5. Bundling Efficiencies: Batch Processing
      6. Improving Data Management
      7. Working with CPUs and GPUs
      8. Choosing a Programming Language
   2. Chapter 5: Confronting the Compute Conundrum
      1. Determining Compute Requirements
      2. Making Sense of DApps
      3. Understanding Quantum Computing
   3. Chapter 6: Calling Up the Cloud
      1. Getting to Know the Cloud
      2. Developing an Optimal Cloud Strategy
      3. Understanding Privacy Compliance and Government Requirements
      4. Seeing How FinTech Helps with Cloud Strategies
   4. Chapter 7: Understanding Blockchain beyond Bitcoin
      1. Understanding the Basics of Blockchain
      2. Discovering How Blockchain Technology Works
      3. Looking at Blockchain’s Role in FinTech
   5. Chapter 8: Acclimating to the App Mentality
      1. Introducing Types of FinTech Apps
      2. Surveying the FinTech App Landscape
      3. Looking at the Nonretail Side of FinTech Apps
      4. Building a GUI Framework
      5. Establishing the Requirements Needed in the Development of an App
   6. Chapter 9: Breaking Down BI Tools
      1. Taking a Strategic Approach to BI
      2. Exploring BI Tools
      3. Choosing the Right BI Tools for FinTech
   7. Chapter 10: Reviewing the Role of Open Source
      1. Defining Open Source
      2. Looking at Open Source Development Processes
      3. Perusing the Pros of Open Source
      4. Considering the Cons of Open Source
      5. Evaluating Open Source Solutions
   8. Chapter 11: Grasping Data Management Fundamentals
      1. Looking at FinTech’s Role in Helping Companies Manage Their Data
      2. Understanding ETL: Extract, Transform, and Load
      3. Managing Market Data
      4. Dealing with Databases
      5. Maintaining Data Lineage
      6. Breaking Down Big Data
      7. Differentiating between Structured and Unstructured Data
      8. Comparing SQL and NoSQL
   9. Chapter 12: Adapting for Future Technologies
      1. Harnessing the Power of Artificial Intelligence
      2. Leveraging Machine Learning
      3. Making the Most of Chat Bots
      4. Checking Out Alternative Data Sources
5. Part 3: Working with FinTech Companies
   1. Chapter 13: Deciding Whether to Build, Buy, or Partner
      1. Transforming Your Company Digitally
      2. Exploring Reasons to Build or Buy
      3. Finding a FinTech Partner
      4. Describing the Licensing Models
   2. Chapter 14: Managing Integration with Legacy Systems
      1. Understanding and Tackling the Challenges of Legacy Infrastructures
      2. Walking through the Technical Steps of Updating a Legacy System
      3. Simplifying Integration with Microservices Architecture
   3. Chapter 15: Preparing Your Team for a Successful Project
      1. Assembling a Transformation Team
      2. Setting Realistic Expectations and Timelines
      3. Supporting Change Agents
      4. Retaining Good Employees during Change
      5. Understanding Data-Driven Decision-Making
      6. Breaking the Silos
   4. Chapter 16: Investing in FinTech Companies
      1. Understanding the Players
      2. Navigating the Investor Landscape
      3. Conducting Due Diligence
      4. Evaluating a Company’s Growth Strategies
      5. Considering a Company’s Culture
   5. Chapter 17: Figuring Out the FinTech Endgame
      1. Bringing the Board Up to Speed on FinTech
      2. Looking into the Future of FinTech
      3. Identifying Industry-Driven Networks, Accelerators, and Incubators
      4. Mulling Over Mergers and Acquisitions
6. Part 4: The Part of Tens
   1. Chapter 18: Ten Symptoms of Ailing Legacy Technology
      1. A Band-Aid Overload
      2. A Lack of Backward Compatibility
      3. Incompatibility with Other Systems
      4. Disparate Data
      5. Spreadsheet Risk
      6. Latency
      7. Increasing Demand for Support and Maintenance
      8. Short-Term Gains and Long-Term Pains
      9. A Shrinking Talent Pool
      10. Lost Market Opportunities
   2. Chapter 19: Ten Questions for Determining Whether to Build or Buy
      1. Is This Functionality Core to Our Business?
      2. Is the Application Unique?
      3. Which Approach Is More Cost-Effective?
      4. Should This Application Be Built?
      5. What Are the Risks of Building versus Buying?
      6. When Does Open Source Make Sense?
      7. When Does Building Make Sense?
      8. How Can We Accelerate a Build?
      9. When Does Buying Make Sense?
      10. How Do We Select a Vendor and a Product?
   3. Chapter 20: Ten Considerations When Using Open Source Technology
      1. Your Business Model
      2. Open Source Community Health
      3. Tech Support
      4. Security
      5. Code Audits
      6. Reliability
      7. Hidden Costs
      8. Updates and Upgrades
      9. Potential Hardware Impact
      10. Legal Considerations
7. Appendix: Building a FinTech Company from the Ground Up
   1. Writing a Business Plan
   2. Developing a Prototype
   3. Operating Off the Grid
   4. Raising Capital
   5. ‘The future of Fintech post the Corona crisis?’
8. Index
9. About the Authors
10. Advertisement Page
11. Connect with Dummies
12. End User License Agreement

List of Tables

1. Chapter 3
   1. TABLE 3-1 RegTech Challenges and Required Technology
2. Chapter 6
   1. TABLE 6-1 Public Clouds versus Private Clouds
3. Chapter 7
   1. TABLE 7-1 Blockchain Network Types
4. Chapter 9
   1. TABLE 9-1 General BI Applications
   2. TABLE 9-2 Niche BI Applications
5. Chapter 13
   1. TABLE 13-1 Building versus Buying
6. Chapter 14
   1. TABLE 14-1 Personnel in an Integration Project
7. Chapter 18
   1. TABLE 18-1 Developers with COBOL Skills

List of Illustrations

1. Chapter 1
   1. FIGURE 1-1: The Fintech Cube combines financial sector, business model, and tec...
   2. FIGURE 1-2: Key areas of financial services that benefit from FinTech.
   3. FIGURE 1-3: A dimension of main business models.
   4. FIGURE 1-4: The key technologies used to achieve change.
   5. FIGURE 1-5: FinTech hubs are globally diversified.
   6. FIGURE 1-6: A 2019 drop in global FinTech investment.
   7. FIGURE 1-7: FinTech investment in Europe and North America continued to increas...
2. Chapter 2
   1. FIGURE 2-1: An overview of the global ranking of FinTech centers relative to fu...
3. Chapter 4
   1. FIGURE 4-1: Delivering dinner via APIs versus source code.
   2. FIGURE 4-2: A simple procedural workflow.
   3. FIGURE 4-3: The breakdown of a simple workflow into mini-programs.
   4. FIGURE 4-4: The use of a handler for the most efficient distribution of instruc...
   5. FIGURE 4-5: A waterfall development cycle with corollary marketing and training...
   6. FIGURE 4-6: The breakdown of large components into small, decoupled microservic...
   7. FIGURE 4-7: A typical microservices team and the functions they perform.
   8. FIGURE 4-8: A complex deployment of microservices.
   9. FIGURE 4-9: The tension between the velocity and accuracy of data.
   10. FIGURE 4-10: An example of data management services’ input and output.
   11. FIGURE 4-11: The speedup of a Monte Carlo simulation using CPU versus GPU.
   12. FIGURE 4-12: The accelerated speed of GPU over multiple paths.
4. Chapter 5
   1. FIGURE 5-1: A DDS versus the conventional single source of truth.
   2. FIGURE 5-2: The workflow of a Bitcoin transaction.
   3. FIGURE 5-3: In a qubit, the orbits can spin counterclockwise and clockwise simu...
   4. FIGURE 5-4: Quantum risk analysis speedup.
5. Chapter 6
   1. FIGURE 6-1: A summary of key differences and examples of each type of cloud ser...
   2. FIGURE 6-2: Cloud computing deployment models.
   3. FIGURE 6-3: A hybrid cloud network.
   4. FIGURE 6-4: Scaling on the fly via an automated listener.
   5. FIGURE 6-5: Efficiencies offered by the use of hypervisors.
6. Chapter 7
   1. FIGURE 7-1: Differences between hard and soft forking.
7. Chapter 8
   1. FIGURE 8-1: The relationship between the user, the user interface, and the APIs...
8. Chapter 9
   1. FIGURE 9-1: An example of an OLAP cube.
   2. FIGURE 9-2: An example of what a data storage environment looks like and how it...
   3. FIGURE 9-3: A simple data warehouse process.
   4. FIGURE 9-4: A complex data warehouse structure with workflows.
9. Chapter 10
   1. FIGURE 10-1: An open source nonlinear development process.
   2. FIGURE 10-2: An open source development structure from conception through large...
10. Chapter 11
    1. FIGURE 11-1: An example of ETL workflow.
    2. FIGURE 11-2: Methods of data normalization and cleansing.
    3. FIGURE 11-3: The input of raw data into a data lake and the distribution of tha...
11. Chapter 12
    1. FIGURE 12-1: An interneuron in the central nervous system.
    2. FIGURE 12-2: A representation of an artificial neural network (ANN) that is a f...
    3. FIGURE 12-3: Three classes of machine learning.
12. Chapter 14
    1. FIGURE 14-1: The configuration and workflow differences between legacy systems ...
    2. FIGURE 14-2: The variables that must be addressed to assure a successful migrat...
    3. FIGURE 14-3: The steps that can be taken in a migration and the increase in eff...

Guide

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2. Table of Contents
3. Begin Reading