FinTech Bootcamps in NYC or Live Online

What is FinTech?

FinTech, a portmanteau of finance and technology, is a large category of different tools and applications that are designed to assist in the flow of commerce and the exchange of goods and assets. If you really want to get pedantic, paper currency, systems of credit and the idea of partial ownership of a company through the stock market are all examples of FinTech, but the term in its most common parlance refers to software programs, applications and other digital tools meant to make the process of buying and trading assets easier and more efficient. Learning how to utilize these tools will help you become a more adept trader and will help to ensure that you can remain competitive in the job market as the financial sector becomes increasingly focused on digital technologies as opposed to physical exchange. Given how varied and specialized the different kinds of FinTech are, it would behoove anyone looking to utilize these tools professionally to enroll in a course designed to teach them how to leverage FinTech applications in their daily lives.

Why Learn FinTech?

If you work in or around the financial industry, learning how to best leverage the tools available to you is an essential part of making sure that you are competitive as an employee, investor or employer. Not only will learning these skills help you more accurately predict movements in the market and make more informed decisions with your or your clients’ finances, but it will also make the process of keeping and gathering records and maintaining important databases significantly simpler. Learning these skills is also the gateway to a new career and potential financial independence.

Beyond working directly in the financial industry or becoming an investor yourself, FinTech tools have applications in a wide range of personal and professional fields. Business owners can use them to track finances and make smart decisions regarding the application of capital. Freelancers in all fields can use them to keep records and make the process of invoicing clients and filing taxes easier. Even non-professionals can take advantage of learning how to track their savings and make sound decisions regarding things like their retirement plans using a basic FinTech education. Given that we all engage in commerce every day, learning the most up-to-date publicly available FinTech applications can help anyone make smart, long-term decisions regarding their finances.

What Will You Learn in a FinTech Course?

Since FinTech is such a large umbrella category, what you will learn in a FinTech course is likely to vary based on the central focus of the course and its target audience. A course, for example, may be focused on stock market investors looking to become more familiar with data analytics FinTech tools, while another course may focus on the application of FinTech programs in tracking household finances. This means that you’ll want to pay extra attention to the structure and syllabus of the course you are signing up for and you’ll want to spend a bit more time looking over your various options for the class that is the best fit for you.

That said, there are a handful of skills that are commonly taught either across the board in FinTech classes or are taught frequently enough to be worth mentioning on their own.

Excel

Microsoft Excel is one of the world’s most widely used software applications and almost all FinTech training will start with a lesson on how to use Excel as both a data organization tool and a data processing tool. Excel allows users to set up formulas and functions that will help them easily track their existing assets and expenditures (and to gauge what any given expense will do to the overall state of their finances), which can be useful for users of all professional levels and more advanced functions can be written to include multiple layers of variable data checks, so you can create hypothetical budgets and gauge the prospective value of your assets based on data collected elsewhere. Learning advanced Excel techniques will provide professionals with the tools they need to start creating and maintaining dynamic databases of financial information that are responsive to meaningful changes and new data entering the system.

Excel also serves as a foundational skill for a wide range of other data analytics tasks, which is a key aspect of many FinTech applications. If you want to work with databases, machine learning algorithms, Python and SQL programming or even data visualization applications, you’ll need to have an understanding of some of the elements of Excel. Excel training will be part of most FinTech classes that are aimed at beginners and aspiring professionals, and there are independent Excel classes that you can take to build a baseline understanding of the application before moving on to more advanced and specialized FinTech classes.

Data Analytics

Most modern FinTech applications are concerned with the best practices for collecting and utilizing the immense amount of data that asset markets, financial institutions and other public and private entities generate every day. Knowing how to utilize this data can be the difference between successful and unsuccessful investment projects, meaning that if you want to get an edge on the market, you’ll want to learn how to best utilize this data. Data collection technology has become more expansive and easier to use than ever before, so a FinTech course is likely to cover the most commonly utilized data analytics tools, including teaching programming languages like SQL and Python.

In addition to learning the tools involved in data collection and analysis, you will learn how to read data and how to make reasonable and actionable interpretations based on that data. Having all the data in the world at your fingertips isn’t particularly useful if you don’t know what to do with that data. This means learning how to make quantitative and qualitative interpretations based on the data that can be used to generate actionable plans for your personal finances or your institution’s finances. Making these assessments of your data is a vital part of the process and almost all FinTech classes will cover the skills needed to make use of the data collected.

Data Visualization

In addition to understanding how to interpret data, you are likely to need to learn how to communicate that information to other interested stakeholders (or to make it easier for you to parse the data yourself). Whether you are learning how to use Excel, Tableau, Power BI or any of a number of other data visualization tools, mastering the art of creating interactive charts, graphs and maps is an essential skill for professionals working in and around the financial sector (or just investing on their own as retail investors). Being able to easily communicate and understand your findings is part of the process that makes data analytics viable.

Also, you will learn how data can be used to tell a story and how that story can help you create plans and insights that are useful for your future projects. The ability to use data to create compelling narratives that are easily understood by your audience of stakeholders is a vital professional skill for investment managers and other financial officers working in large companies.

Essential Financial Skills

Unsurprisingly, FinTech classes often focus on teaching students specific, practical financial skills, often focusing on long-term investment. This will vary from program to program, but if you are enrolled in a course on technology focused on investing in the stock market, you are likely also going to learn how the stock market works and what investing in a company entails. Likewise, a course on the use of FinTech in the real estate market is likely to cover real estate. Learning how to practically apply your FinTech training is important, especially if you are interested in utilizing these skills in your own personal financial situation.

New Technologies

One of the most common reasons that anyone opts to enroll in a FinTech class is to get on the cutting edge of new technological developments that are changing the way that commerce is handled. This will, obviously, change depending on when you are reading this, but being up-to-date is always a vital part of any professional development training. Three years ago, this might have involved learning how the blockchain works and what cryptocurrency does, while today, it will mostly focus on artificial intelligence and machine-learning algorithms trained on financial data. Learning how to automate and simplify the analysis and interpretation of data can make you a more effective trader or investment banker, while learning how to use this tech for your own personal finances can make certain kinds of data analysis (that previously would have taken far too long for humans) possible. While it is unclear how this technology will develop over the coming years, it is important to understand the applications that are poised to disrupt the FinTech industry.

Jobs for FinTech Experts

Financial Analyst

Virtually every large company or institution will have multiple financial analysts whose jobs focus on gathering and analyzing relevant financial data that can be used to determine the health of the company and its capacity to move forward with certain plans. Professionals in this field will need to understand predictive data analytics skills (reading existing market data to predict future market conditions) and how to effectively communicate their plans to invested stakeholders. They will also need a detailed understanding of the particular field in which they are working, which isn’t likely to be covered in a FinTech class, so additional training may be required.

Investment Analyst / Investment Banker

Investment Analysts are like Financial Analysts, but their work is more focused on long-term market-based investments and they are more likely to work for a range of clients (including retail traders) than a single institution (though they are likely to work as part of an investment firm or a bank). They are tasked with providing advice and support for clients looking to invest in a host of different assets, whether they are a company looking to expand its business or an individual looking to set up their retirement account. They will need to learn how to predict market movements and when to take risks vs. when to play it safe with consistent investments. They will also need to learn how to communicate their findings to prospective clients and how to make sure that their recommendations are persuasive and sound.

Bookkeeper / Accountant / CPA

It is important that all companies and institutions maintain accurate and accessible records and that all of their financial obligations are met and recorded. This is the work of bookkeepers and accountants, professionals who are tasked with keeping important financial records up-to-date and accurate. They won’t be making predictions about the state of the finances, so they are less likely to need data analytics training, but they are going to need to be better at collecting and storing existing financial data, making learning how to use Excel (and potential SQL) essential to their long-term success. CPAs also have opportunities to earn additional money as notaries, adjudicators, etc., though this will require additional credentialing and certification (particularly as it pertains to various legal concerns).

Software Engineer

While FinTech training is largely designed with practical applications in mind, the underlying skills (such as Python and SQL) can be leveraged in other fields such as software engineering or data science. Someone has to make the tools that analysts and investment bankers use to model financial data and make predictive decisions and there is a great deal of money to be had in this sector (think about how much PayPal was worth or how much is being invested into OpenAI), so learning how to focus your programming skills on this field is a good way to set yourself up for long-term success.

FinTech Use Cases

Since it is such a diverse set of skills and applications, it is worth considering the various use cases for learning FinTech tools even if you aren’t looking to become a professional investment banker.

Personal Finances and Budgeting

While not the most exciting application of FinTech, learning how to use applications like Excel to create a record of your personal finances and build a dynamic budget that is responsive to different expenses, both real and hypothetical, is a valuable skill. This doesn’t require more than a few hours of training such as an introductory Excel course, but it will pay long-term dividends (metaphorically, the real dividends come later in the article) for any household that can structure their financial situation more accurately and easily (and it is likely to be of some use around tax time).

Financial Stability

Everyone wants to be financially stable and not have to worry about sudden expenses or unexpected accidents costing them too much of their savings, nor do they want to risk their long-term stability. Learning how to utilize FinTech applications can be a nice, simple way to help ensure that your finances are invested soundly and you regularly gain a solid ROI. This training is also likely to provide you with advice on the best general investment strategies available to you and how different strategies differ from one another, which is important for investors of all levels.

Retail Investing

With the rise in popularity of phone apps that make trading more accessible than ever (which are, themselves, a form of FinTech), more and more people are putting their money in the stock market as retail traders rather than through things like mutual funds. Learning how to use these investing tools is simple enough, but you may also want to consider learning the basics of FinTech to help you make more informed decisions concerning the short-term and long-term future of the markets (and not get left holding the bag when the latest meme stock collapses).

High School Students

Given that FinTech is about finding the best way to make your assets grow, it is very useful to learn early since the difference between learning these skills at 18 vs. 28 is a decade's worth of interest and accrual that you would be sacrificing. As such, there are a lot of finance and investing classes for high school students who cover the basics of utilizing FinTech and the practical side of making investments. These classes are designed to focus on the kinds of practical skills that high school and prospective college students need to best utilize FinTech skills in their regular lives.

FinTech Classes

When looking at different FinTech classes, you’ll want to consider the different kinds of classes available to you, with an emphasis on how in-depth you want to go in your training. There are classes focused on providing basic skills for students looking to just learn a small amount about FinTech, and there are immersive bootcamps and certificate programs designed to help prepare students for a professional career working with FinTech.

Students looking to learn the basics of FinTech, or who just want an introduction to the subject before diving into a more immersive course, may want to consider something like the Financial Modeling Bootcamp, where you will learn the basics of utilizing various tools, including Excel, to create databases that can be used to organize and model financial information. This kind of modeling is an important aspect of the data analytics side of finance and investing, so learning these skills will give you a solid foundation upon which to grow your skills in the future.

If you already have a foundation in programming, you can enroll in the Python for Finance Bootcamp, which will cover the Python essentials that you need to know if you plan on working with more advanced programming applications in the context of finance. Here, you’ll learn how to utilize financial libraries, gather/manipulate financial data, fetch APIs for company and economic data, analyze SEC financial statements, build risk models, and apply linear regression for stock price predictions. This course is an ideal class for finance professionals who want to apply their computer programming skills to their daily workload.

You can also enroll in classes dedicated to teaching specific skills that are related to or essential in the financial sector such as the Data Analytics Bootcamp or a course focusing on data visualizations, like the Tableau Certificate Program or the Python Data Visualization and Interactive Dashboards course. These focused classes are a good way to build your own FinTech curriculum and learn the skills that you feel are the most useful for you personally. Since these aren’t comprehensive classes, you will need to check to make sure that you meet the requirements for each of these courses and that they are covering the practical skills that you need.

If you are aiming for a career change and hope to get a comprehensive FinTech education, Noble Desktop offers a FinTech Bootcamp program that includes training in everything from the basics of stock market investing to the use of Python as a data visualization and data analytics tool. This career-focused program will teach novices interested in FinTech all of the skills they need to start an entry-level career in the field. All of the lessons are modeled on real-world financial concerns, and the course will provide students with career-focused training meant to be immediately applicable to everyday financial tasks. The course also offers students training in machine learning and AI skills, ensuring that they can stay up-to-date on the latest in the world of FinTech. At the conclusion of the course, you’ll work on a practical portfolio that you can add to your job materials and you’ll receive a certificate of completion that will allow potential clients and employers to know that you have received high-quality FinTech training.