Financial Services in the Twenty-First Century

Book excerpt: This textbook covers financial systems and services, particularly focusing on present systems and future developments. Broken into three parts, Part One establishes the public institutional framework in which financial services are conducted, defines financial service systems, critically examines the link between finance, wealth and income inequality, and economic growth, challenges conventional paradigms about the raison d’être of financial institutions and markets, and considers the loss of US financial hegemony to emerging regional entities [BRICS]. Part Two focuses on financial innovation by explaining the impact of the following technologies: cryptography, FinTech, distributed ledger technology, and artificial intelligence. Part Three assesses to what extent financial innovation has disrupted legacy banking and the delivery of financial services, identifies the main obstacles to reconstructing the whole financial system based upon “first principles thinking”: Nation State regulation and incumbent interests of multi-national companies, and provides a cursory description of how the pandemic of COVID-19 may establish a “new normal” for the financial services industry. Combining rigorous detail alongside exercises and PowerPoint slides for each chapter, this textbook helps finance students understand the wide breadth of financial systems and speculates the forthcoming developments in the industry. A website to serve as a companion to the textbook is available here: www.johnjaburke.com.