Stern was early to market with an initial business school course on Bitcoin, offered in the autumn of 2014 and co-taught by Professor of Finance David Yermack, who will additionally take on the role of co-chair of the new fintech MBA course.

With VC investments pouring into the hot fintech sector, Yermack predicts a bright future for graduates of the course.

“The mechanism by which people exchange financial assets will look incredibly different five years from now,” he says. “Inevitably, there will be more peer-to-peer exchanges without a human middleman to certify the transaction. In addition to start-ups, many jobs will be situated in legacy banks that are currently racing to catch up with the technology.”

The course will address a range of subjects including trading strategies; transaction security, and trade clearing and settlement; data management; risk management; financial data analytics; regulation and the impact of digital currencies on the financial services industry; mobile payments; and entrepreneurial crowdfunding.

Professor of Information Systems Alexander Tuzhilin, the other academic co-chair on the course, says: “Fintech is about how modern information technologies are disrupting the financial services industry. Stern has combined its considerable strengths in both finance and technology to create courses that discuss how these two areas blend together to enable new business models, innovations and opportunities.”

Several Stern faculty are currently conducting research in fintech on issues ranging from corporate governance and the blockchain, to robots and investing. The School is also running a Design Sprint challenge to foster new thinking on the application of disruptive technology to banking, and in November will host a fintech conference featuring Stern alumnus and keynote Dan Schulman, CEO of PayPal.