Financial Technology Fundamentals for Finance Professionals Training Course

Course overview

Finance teams are increasingly asked to assess payment platforms, automate reconciliations, interpret digital transaction data, support open-banking initiatives, and evaluate vendors making claims about artificial intelligence, blockchain, or cloud finance. Yet many finance professionals lack a structured way to distinguish a useful technology application from an expensive, poorly controlled solution. This course equips participants to evaluate financial technology in terms that matter to finance: process efficiency, data quality, controls, regulatory obligations, implementation cost, and measurable business value.

Participants examine the fintech ecosystem across payments, digital banking, lending, wealth technology, insurtech, regtech, blockchain applications, and embedded finance. They learn how APIs, ISO 20022 messages, cloud platforms, robotic process automation, machine learning, and distributed ledgers affect accounting operations, treasury, compliance, financial reporting, and customer-facing financial services. Practical skills include mapping a finance process for automation, assessing a fintech vendor, defining control requirements, analysing a payment-data set, and developing a business case for a technology initiative.

Instructor-led briefings are paired with applied workshops, finance-sector case studies, group evaluation exercises, and structured discussions of implementation risks. Participants use Excel and Power BI to analyse transaction and operational data, review API and ISO 20022 examples, and apply a fintech evaluation scorecard to a realistic business scenario. They leave with a completed fintech adoption pack: a process map, vendor assessment, control checklist, benefits case, and 90-day application plan that can be adapted for their own organisation.

The course is designed for finance and accounting professionals who work alongside technology, operations, risk, treasury, or transformation teams and need enough technical fluency to make sound business decisions without becoming software engineers.

Course objectives

By the end of this course, participants will be able to:

• Map an end-to-end finance process to identify automation, integration, and control opportunities
• Classify payment, banking, lending, regtech, blockchain, and embedded-finance business models
• Interpret API request-response flows and ISO 20022 payment-message fields for finance use cases
• Evaluate a fintech vendor using a weighted scorecard covering functionality, security, controls, cost, and scalability
• Analyse transaction data in Excel and Power BI to identify exceptions, trends, and reconciliation issues
• Define control requirements for automated workflows, including access, audit trail, exception handling, and segregation of duties
• Prepare a quantified fintech business case using baseline metrics, benefits assumptions, implementation costs, and risk controls
• Produce a 90-day fintech adoption plan with stakeholders, milestones, governance actions, and success measures

Benefits of attending

Target competencies

Who should attend

• Finance Managers — who must assess technology investments affecting close, reporting, and finance operations
• Financial Controllers — who need to preserve auditability and control as processes become automated
• Treasury Professionals — who evaluate payment, cash-management, banking, and liquidity technologies
• Accountants and Finance Analysts — who work with transaction data, reconciliations, and digital reporting processes
• Risk and Compliance Professionals — who assess regulatory, data, and operational-control implications of fintech adoption
• Finance Transformation Leads — who translate operational requirements into credible technology initiatives

Requirements and prerequisites

Participants should understand core finance and accounting processes, including accounts payable or receivable, reconciliations, financial controls, budgeting, cash management, or reporting. Confidence using spreadsheets is expected; participants should be able to filter data, use basic formulas, and interpret tables or charts in Excel. Familiarity with ERP systems, banking portals, payment files, or finance transformation projects is helpful but not essential. No programming, database administration, API development, blockchain implementation, or advanced data-science experience is required. Complete beginners to fintech should expect a practical foundation, while experienced finance users will gain a structured evaluation framework.

Training methodology

The programme combines focused instructor-led teaching with finance-specific application work. Participants dissect payment flows, API examples, ISO 20022 message structures, vendor proposals, and automated reconciliation scenarios before applying the concepts in small groups. Hands-on exercises use Excel and Power BI to investigate transaction exceptions and operational metrics. Case discussions test decisions about vendor due diligence, cloud risk, control design, and implementation governance. Each participant progressively builds a fintech adoption pack, then uses the final session to prioritise a workplace use case and define a practical 90-day action plan.

Course outline

Day 1: Fintech landscape and finance operating model

• Fintech ecosystem: payments, digital banking, lending, wealthtech, insurtech, and regtech
• Finance value chains from transaction capture to reporting and decision support
• Digital finance operating models and the role of banks, platforms, and non-bank providers
• Embedded finance and Banking-as-a-Service commercial models
• Fintech value drivers: cost, speed, customer experience, control, and data access
• Finance-process pain-point mapping for automation and digitisation
• Technology-risk categories for finance leaders: operational, conduct, cyber, data, and third-party risk

Workshop: Participants map a selected procure-to-pay, order-to-cash, treasury, or reporting process and produce a prioritised list of fintech opportunities and control concerns.

Day 2: Payments, data and integration foundations

• Digital payment rails, cards, account-to-account payments, wallets, and real-time payments
• Payment lifecycle controls from initiation and authentication to settlement and reconciliation
• ISO 20022 message architecture and finance-relevant payment data fields
• Open banking, consent management, and account-information use cases
• API fundamentals: endpoints, authentication, requests, responses, and error handling
• Integration patterns between ERP, bank, payment gateway, and reconciliation systems
• Transaction-data quality checks for completeness, duplicates, timeliness, and reference integrity

Workshop: Participants inspect sample API payloads and ISO 20022 payment messages, then produce a data-and-control map for an automated payment workflow.

Day 3: Automation, analytics and intelligent finance operations

• Robotic process automation use cases in accounts payable, receivable, close, and reconciliations
• Workflow automation design: triggers, rules, approvals, exceptions, and handoffs
• Machine-learning use cases for fraud detection, cash forecasting, and anomaly identification
• Generative AI use cases and limitations in finance documentation, analysis, and service operations
• Excel transaction analysis using filters, pivot tables, lookups, and exception flags
• Power BI dashboards for payment volumes, ageing, exceptions, and operational service levels
• Human review, model governance, and explainability requirements for finance decisions

Workshop: Using a transaction-data set, participants build an exception-analysis workbook and Power BI dashboard that highlights duplicate, late, and unusual payments.

Day 4: Blockchain, cloud, regulation and fintech risk

• Distributed ledger concepts: nodes, consensus, immutability, tokens, and smart contracts
• Blockchain use cases in trade finance, digital assets, identity, and audit trails
• Digital assets, stablecoins, central bank digital currencies, and treasury implications
• Cloud service models and shared-responsibility controls for finance systems
• Fintech regulatory themes: AML, KYC, sanctions screening, data privacy, and consumer protection
• Third-party risk assessment for fintech providers, subcontractors, and data processors
• Control-by-design requirements for access, audit logs, resilience, incident response, and segregation of duties

Workshop: Teams conduct a structured risk review of a proposed cloud-based payment and digital-asset service, producing a control requirements checklist and escalation recommendations.

Day 5: Vendor selection, business case and implementation planning

• Fintech requirements definition using process, data, control, and user-journey criteria
• Weighted vendor scorecards for functionality, integration, security, support, cost, and scalability
• Total cost of ownership covering licensing, implementation, integration, training, and operating costs
• Benefits measurement using baseline metrics, cycle time, error rates, cash visibility, and control indicators
• Pilot design, proof-of-concept criteria, and post-implementation review measures
• Fintech implementation governance, stakeholder roles, and decision rights
• 90-day adoption roadmaps with milestones, dependencies, risk actions, and executive reporting

Workshop: Participants present a fintech adoption pack containing a vendor scorecard, quantified business case, control checklist, and 90-day implementation plan for a finance use case.

Tools & standards covered

Microsoft Excel, Microsoft Power BI, ISO 20022, Postman

A typical training day

Live online deliveries follow the same structure in the East Africa Time zone, with shorter screen blocks and longer breaks.

What the fee includes

How you can take this course

Certification

Participants who complete the full five days receive the Skillset Development Certificate of Completion, stating the course title, course code, dates and delivery format — suitable for professional-development records and employer reimbursement.

Frequently asked questions