FIN383: Question 1 Ant, the Titan of Fintech in China, is Seeking a dual listing in Hong Kong and Shanghai: Financial Technologies and Innovations Assignment, SUSS, Singapore

Question 1
Ant, the titan of fintech in China, is seeking a dual listing in Hong Kong and Shanghai and when it is listed, it is believed that Ant’s IPO will probably be the biggest IPO in history. If Ant’s listing is successful, it will have a market capitalization that is comparable to JP Morgan Chase, the world’s biggest bank that begun in 1799. It took Ant less than 20 years to achieve

what JP Morgan Chase has achieved in 221 years.

Discuss and explain the factors behind the meteoric rise of Ant in China.
Make good use of examples, statistics, and events to augment your discussion.

Question 2
The rise of Ant has been watched closely by many in the banking industry, not least the CEO and Chairman of JP Morgan Chase, Mr. Jamie Dimon. They have kept a wary and admiring eye on the rise of Ant and have taken proactive steps to ensure their profitability has not been eroded by these new players.

Discuss and explain the approaches that have been taken by incumbent banks to adapt to the rising competition.

Conclude, in your opinion, what would be the future of banking and finance.

Make good use of examples, statistics, and events to augment your discussion and conclusion.

Question 3
With the increasing use of technology in finance, regulators are also showing keenness in the usage of technology in regulatory matters. To quote the words of Mr. Andrew G Haldane, Chief Economist of the Bank of England, in a speech he made in 2014, he said1 I have a dream. It is futuristic but realistic. It involves a Star Trek chair and a bank of monitors. It would involve tracking the global flow of funds in close to real-time, in much the same way as happens with global weather systems and global internet traffic. Its centerpiece would be a global map of financial flows, charting spillovers, and correlations.

There might be a start-up trying to achieve the dreams of Mr. Haldane. However, for this dream to be possible, one of the most important, but the mundane, task ahead is to standardize all regulatory reporting forms and formats. Only with a standardized reporting format, the collected data can be aggregated effortlessly for subsequent dissemination, comparison, and
decision-making. More importantly, by standardizing the reporting format and providing a clear definition of the data to report, contributors will ensure that the reported data is the intended data to be collected with sufficient depth and clarity for decision-making.

In this question, we will look at the regulations governing Robo-advisors and their reporting requirements.

Robo-advisors are governed under the Securities and Futures Act in Singapore and these digital advisors act on behalf of their clients to perform periodic portfolio rebalancing to address portfolio drift. Under the Act, Robo-advisors are required to provide their clients with details of their portfolios regularly. Let assume that the Authority stipulates that details of the client’ portfolio be presented in the format specified in

Appendix A

Figure 1: query_date refers to the date that the portfolio’s holding is queried from the portfolio and prices databases. selected_pf refers to the portfolio that was selected to generate the holding report. pf_file and price_file are the databases recording all the clients’ portfolios and the historical stock prices, respectively. Details of the data format of the databases are given in

Appendix B.
Design and create a Python script that allows you to provide the details of the portfolio’s holding in accordance with the format specified in Appendix A. You can assume that the query date is always on the last trading day of the year. Use your script to generate the report for the inputs given in Figure 1.