Fintech: why are programmers waiting here

Within a few days, the summer school and the hackathon in fintech will start , which is held by the Financial University and the Moscow Polytechnic University with the support of the Numa accelerator and NP RTS. The event will bring together programmers and financiers. After two weeks of training, participants will receive certificates of advanced training and many acquaintances with experts, and, in the end, will take part in the hackathon. For this purpose, VoxImplant sends the technical evangelist of the company, Grigory Petrov .

We talked with the school organizers Timofey Golovin and Alexander Didenko about how the school will go, where Fintech is heading, and how the developer will take part in the school (FREE OF CHARGE).

Why did you choose this format - school plus hackathon?

Timofey : Our task is to pump participants to understand the financial market as a whole. There are many focused events that Alfa-Bank, Tinkoff Credit Systems, and Sberbank hold. We take finances in a broad sense, because finances are banks, insurance companies, various financial agencies, brokers and other financial intermediaries. We give information about everything that exists in the financial market, as well as applied knowledge about existing platforms that are used in the financial market. From my own communication experience, I can say that programmers who do not understand finance as such cannot do anything reasonable in terms of system architecture. The same goes for financiers who do not understand what Agile is and how to build processes quickly. The same IBM Watson for financiers can open up such creative opportunities that they did not even realize.

Alexander : A programmer is a man with a hammer. For him, everything looks like a nail, and he is ready to hammer the blockchain, even where it is not needed at all. A financier, in general, knows nothing about a hammer. During school, we will team them together so that they can make a wonderful product together. Not bad, for example, if financiers take on school data analysis on Python or a master class at HP IDOL, and programmers learn about cases in telematic insurance and behavioral finance. We will make sure that both financiers and programmers at the school find each other and take the knowledge that they really lack for projects - they will have the opportunity to choose.
')
How to help financiers and programmers better understand each other?

Timofey : With the help of joint project training. Before the hackathon begins, all participants in the school will take part in master classes many times where they will do team projects.

Alexander : We will try to break up the teams in such a way that school participants can work as much as possible with a lot of people, such speed dating for two weeks. In my opinion, an idea in a startup is far from the most important thing; in startups, chemistry between people is more important. Therefore, by the beginning of the hackathon, we want teams to form in which participants can comfortably work with each other. And our friends from brain-to-brain will help with social chemistry, they are experts in this.

Who is leaving applications now? What is the background?

Alexander : We have received over 50 applications, and we can easily accept about fifteen more. I would like the financiers and programmers to be equally divided, but for now we see an advantage over the first percent by twenty. However, it should be noted that the fashion for machine learning has not bypassed anyone: among the financiers who sent applications for the school, someone has already developed in Python, someone has gone through the school of Yandex analysis or the Center for Mathematical Finance. But we are ready to take more strong developers. And for them free participation and even accommodation is possible if they are from other cities. Our general sponsor, the RTS Non-Profit Partnership, is ready to cover the costs.

What is the perfect team to make a good product? Exactly need a developer. A marketer or designer needed at the stage of creating a prototype?

Timofey : The composition of classic hakatons is usually a marketer, programmer and designer. We still have another accent in Fintech. For our hackathon, the ideal lineup is the front-ender, back-ender and leader. The head additionally takes on the tasks of the marketer, the back-ender - the architect, the front-ender - the designer and layout designer. Of course, a good designer is important, but the design, as a rule, closes the holes, unrealized functionality, and we will take it with functionality.

Alexander : Absolutely. Beautiful logos and images are optional, there should be just a sane interface. The product should work, something should happen there, some calculations, some interaction with the server. And yet, “financiers” is a conditional term, by which we understand productologists as well. And when we talk about "developers", we assume that they are also designers, at the first stage. Plus, we will have an excellent master class on such a fashionable way to replace the front-end, like chatbots, from the Chatbots Community. So there will be an opportunity to do without a designer at all.

What would you recommend to those interested in FINTECH? What to read, what events to follow, what to learn? Who sets the trends?

Alexander : We, of course (laughs) ! Financial University, in fact, one of the leading universities of technology in the world of finance. We regularly conduct lectures, we invite colleagues from various companies: Qiwi, VTB-24, Leader, 2can, and any. Further, the Agency for Strategic Initiatives, where the FinNet group works - they conduct regular hackathons, foresight. Accelerators FRIA and Numa. By the way, they and ASI have become our partners in the School. In general, 2016 was the year of fintech. We conceived the school in April, and hit the bull's eye: now events about Fintech have climbed from all the cracks.

Timofey : Among other things, there are a lot of resources, ranging from specialized, to TechCrunch. There are international leading companies in terms of innovations in Fintech: Citigroup, Deutche Bank, JPMorgan, EY. They all often publish research on this topic. But in order to land everything on the Russian market, you need to read the legislation of the Russian Federation.

Alexander : And, by the way, that’s why we’ll have people from the Bank of Russia at the school - this is another who sets the trends! We expect Vadim Kalukhov, the head of the department of Fintech, who will tell the audience about the plans of the Bank of Russia for the blockchain and what projects our children will definitely “not take off” - simply because the Bank of Russia will be against. We are interested in realism - also because Numa and IIDF will look at the output.

What technologies and developments does the financial industry need?

Alexander : Banks and all financial intermediaries are sitting on a huge amount of data about their customers. And only a few of the banks were able to take advantage of this, putting it at the center of their business model. We can look at Tinkoff Credit Systems, which is building its economy around big data. If you have a good scoring, you can borrow money in a completely different way, give it differently. And this is just a formula, a model. This means that you need to invest in the development of this formula. Next story is the internet of things. This is the next big thing in Fintech. We will have a very fashionable case for telematic insurance, and we will deal with it from different sides, both as a case, and as some task of analyzing data, and even on the machines we will take a ride. Telematic insurance in the West is already known for 10 years. This is when a box is built in your car that tells your insurance company which driver is driving. Further, the insurance dynamically changes the size of the contribution, based on how the client drives. If the checkers are played on the Moscow Ring Road, then there will be one bet, if it goes quietly, then it is completely different. There is a way to a very interesting problem.

What can impede the development of fintech companies?

Alexander : Uncertainty about the position of the regulator. The financial sphere is strictly regulated, it’s not for you to cut iPhone apps - the consequences of a mistake are very serious. In Fintech you make a product, and then it turns out that it is illegal. Probably, as a result, Fintech will look like pharmaceuticals, where serious innovations go along with serious regulation, and this gives rise to drama. The second point is the risks of monopolization. Any truly cool technology tends to capture the entire market at once. And further it turns out as in live systems: when one genotype dominates, the population becomes vulnerable to some viruses, for example. Another risk is the complexity of the systems. The same uberization is not the elimination of the intermediary, but the complication of it, in fact. When we make complex systems, we do not always understand the consequences. The old systems are known, it is understood what to expect from them. And from the new - no.

Timofey : The pain in my opinion is that with the constant complication of the system, we become dependent on a larger number of factors. First of all, they are dependent on infrastructure elements. And if the server falls? Information about a person, transactions was stored, a failure occurred - everything. Where is the deal? The second important question is security, which concerns everything. So you can not get into the system and change. Now all this has become more relevant, given the latest story with the ethers.

According to your observation, what do Fintech startups pay more attention to, and which niches, on the contrary, are not at all occupied?

Timofey : I know a lot of startups about home finances, about payments and transactions, bank scoring. But I see very few startups that would help, for example, venture funds or insurance. By the way, this area is growing very fast. Soon we will insure everything - down to the files on the computer. Here are these niches: venture funds, insurance - much less attention to them. Perhaps because of a misunderstanding of this area. Therefore, we will have a very cool case from Ingosstrakh, we want people to understand this topic.

Alexander : I personally think that now there is an empty niche in pension funds. We need technologies that would allow for a decent old age - something like private wealth, but for ordinary people, without a thirty-meter yacht in Nice. Perfect marketplace. Not to help people make money right now, this is an ancient story, and a ghostly one as well. But how to make a person have money for old age - so that he does not reduce his quality of life when he retires, this is important not only for Russia. People are aging all over the world, and it will only get worse. Fintech related to their retirement savings is a very interesting story. Therefore, we will give behavioral and classical quantitative finances, arm people in front of the hackathon. And then let them choose what they do.

Timofey Golovin

He opened and managed the Moscow branch of Dnevnik.ru (the largest school system and the system of electronic journals / diaries in the Russian Federation), led the international payment startup EasyPay-TravelDestination. He worked as an advisor to the Chairman of the Board of the Bank on IT, participated in the preparation of innovative development concepts for several banks. Experience in the strategic development of IT companies, investment analysis, entrepreneurship. Member of the FinNet working group at the Agency for Strategic Initiatives. Corporate Services Director at NUMA Moscow.

Alexander Didenko

Dean of the faculty of the IER (Financial University under the Government of the Russian Federation). Before joining the faculty team, he worked in brokerage companies and banks (Gazprombank, Finam, and others), where he traded securities and derivatives, was a corporate blogger and lecturer, and also performed administrative functions. Alexander also founded several startups, wrote a PhD in economics, wrote a doctoral and raised two daughters.