BAFI3287 Introduction to Financial Technology rewards students who explain which financial function a technology performs and at what cost, not those who narrate how blockchain or AI works.
BAFI3287 Introduction to Financial Technology rewards students who explain which financial function a technology performs and at what cost, not those who narrate how blockchain or AI works. Most students who struggle with this RMIT finance course are not short on effort — they produce a competent explainer on payments, lending, or digital assets, but never connect the technology back to intermediation, risk, and regulation to reach a defensible judgement. This guide answers the seven questions Vietnamese students at RMIT ask MAAS mentors most often before they start BAFI3287.
Author: MAAS Editorial Team · Reviewed by a Senior Finance mentor (PhD, Banking & Finance)
Last updated: 2026-07-20
Category: writing-tips
What is BAFI3287 Introduction to Financial Technology about?
Direct answer: BAFI3287 is an RMIT finance course that examines how technology is reshaping the delivery of financial services. It typically covers digital payments and mobile money, peer-to-peer and marketplace lending, robo-advice and wealth technology, blockchain, digital assets and central bank digital currencies, InsurTech, open banking and data sharing, and the regulatory response including RegTech and regulatory sandboxes. The course wants you to analyse a fintech proposition the way a finance professional would — what problem it solves, whose margin it takes, what risk it moves, and what a regulator should think — rather than describe the technology itself.
Evidence: The teaching frame is well established in the finance literature: the Financial Stability Board defines fintech as technologically enabled innovation in financial services that could produce new business models, applications, processes, or products with a material effect on financial markets and institutions. Arner, Barberis and Buckley (2016) trace the evolution to today's regulation-driven phase, and Philippon (2016) sets out the efficiency case that most assessments implicitly test.
Example: A Vietnamese student at RMIT Vietnam arrived at MAAS with a draft that spent 800 words explaining how a distributed ledger validates a transaction. Her mentor reframed the task: what function is being performed, who used to perform it, and is the new arrangement cheaper or merely different. Once she wrote from that lens, the draft became an argument about settlement cost and counterparty risk, and her mark moved from a Pass-level draft to a Distinction.
What assessment does the BAFI3287 assignment usually involve?
Direct answer: Finance courses at this level are commonly assessed through an individual report or case analysis of a specific fintech firm, product, or segment, often with a group component, a short presentation or pitch, and sometimes a quiz on core concepts. You are typically asked to analyse a business model, evaluate its risks and regulatory position, and reach a justified conclusion about its viability or its implications for incumbent banks. Always confirm the exact task, word count, and weighting in your own Canvas shell, because assessment structure changes by semester and campus.
Evidence: RMIT business assessments are criterion-referenced, meaning marks are awarded against published rubric criteria rather than ranked against classmates. This is set out in RMIT's Assessment policy, which is why decoding the rubric matters far more than how many fintech examples you can name.
Example: A Vietnamese RMIT student spent half of a 1,500-word report on the funding history of a payments startup before reaching his analysis. His MAAS mentor cut the company timeline to three sentences and reallocated the words to the unit economics and the licensing question. Same firm, same word count — the analysis-led version earned a clear Distinction.
How is the BAFI3287 assignment graded — what does the rubric actually reward?
Direct answer: Fintech rubrics at this level reward four things, roughly in this order: (1) correct application of finance concepts — intermediation, information asymmetry, transaction costs, risk transfer — to the specific technology, (2) accurate use of evidence such as fees, adoption figures, or market data to support the argument, (3) critical evaluation of risks, regulatory exposure, and alternatives, including who bears the downside, and (4) academic writing and Harvard referencing. Explaining how a technology works earns almost no marks on its own; marks live in what it changes financially and whether that change is sustainable.
Evidence: RMIT business rubrics use criterion bands (Pass / Credit / Distinction / High Distinction). The jump from Credit to Distinction is almost always defined by the words "critical" and "justified" — critical evaluation of a business model, justified interpretation of evidence — not by covering more technologies.
Example: A MAAS mentor marked one Vietnamese student's draft sentence by sentence, labelling each as "describe", "apply", or "evaluate". The draft was 70% describe: a technical tour with no finance attached. After one restructuring pass that named the financial function under each claim and weighed the credit and liquidity risk being carried, the same case moved up two full rubric bands.
Which frameworks should you use in BAFI3287?
Direct answer: Anchor your analysis in two or three lenses that fit your case rather than surveying the syllabus. A workable spine is: the financial-function view, which asks what function the fintech performs and who used to perform it; transaction costs and information asymmetry, which explain why an intermediary existed at all; the unbundling-and-rebundling lens, which explains how a fintech attacks one strip of a bank's value chain; risk transfer, which asks who now holds credit, liquidity, operational, and cyber risk; and the regulatory perimeter, which asks whether the activity is licensed, exempt, or sitting in a sandbox. Choose the lenses your evidence can actually support.
| Lens | What it explains | Use it to decide |
|---|---|---|
| Financial-function view (Merton) | Which enduring function — payment, pooling, risk transfer, information — is being performed | Whether this is genuine innovation or a new wrapper on an old function |
| Transaction costs and information asymmetry | Why intermediaries exist and where technology removes friction | Where the real cost saving is, and whether it is durable |
| Unbundling and rebundling | How a fintech attacks one strip of a bank's value chain, then re-aggregates | Whether an incumbent should partner, copy, or acquire |
| Risk transfer | Who now bears credit, liquidity, operational, and cyber risk | Whether risk was reduced or merely relocated, often to the customer |
| Regulatory perimeter and RegTech | Whether the activity is licensed, exempt, or in a sandbox | How defensible the model is if regulation tightens |
Evidence: These are examiner-recognised foundations rather than industry commentary: Merton (1995) for the functional perspective on financial intermediation, Arner, Barberis and Buckley (2016) for the evolution of fintech and its regulatory phase, Philippon (2016) for the efficiency argument, and the Financial Stability Board (2017) for the supervisory framing of financial-stability risks.
Example: A Vietnamese RMIT student analysing a buy-now-pay-later provider tried to apply five lenses shallowly. Her MAAS mentor cut it to two — the financial-function view to show this is consumer credit under another name, and risk transfer to show where default risk actually sits. Fewer lenses, deeper application, higher mark.
How should you structure the BAFI3287 report?
Direct answer: Use a question-led structure: (1) a brief introduction stating the fintech proposition and your position, keeping company background under 10% of the word count, (2) the financial function and business model analysed with your chosen lens, (3) evidence — fees, margins, adoption, loss rates — that you interpret rather than merely display, (4) a critical evaluation of risk, regulation, and competitive response, and (5) a justified conclusion. Every table or chart must be referred to and interpreted in the text. The single biggest structural fix is shrinking the technology explanation and expanding the financial analysis, where the marks concentrate.
Evidence: Criterion-referenced rubrics weight "application of concepts", "use of evidence", and "critical evaluation" far above "background and description". Matching your word budget to the rubric weighting is the most reliable way to lift a grade without finding new material.
Example: A Vietnamese RMIT student submitted a report with a 400-word explanation of how QR payments work and a two-line conclusion. His MAAS mentor inverted the balance, giving the evaluation room to weigh merchant fee pressure against float income and compliance cost. Same case, same sources — the report moved from a borderline Credit to a Distinction because the trade-offs were finally argued.
What are the most common mistakes that lose marks in BAFI3287?
Direct answer: Three recurring mistakes show up across MAAS finance coaching. First, students explain the technology instead of analysing the finance — the report reads like a product page. Second, adoption or valuation figures are dropped in without interpretation or a date, which is fatal in a sector where numbers age within a year. Third, conclusions are promotional ("this fintech will disrupt banking") rather than balanced assessments that name the regulatory exposure, the unit economics, and the incumbent's likely response. Fixing these three lifts most drafts by at least one rubric band.
Evidence: Across MAAS finance coaching, marker feedback before intervention clusters heavily on "needs more analysis" and "evidence not interpreted" — the two phrases that most often separate a Credit from a Distinction in RMIT business rubrics.
Example: A Vietnamese student's conclusion read "e-wallets will replace banks in Vietnam." His MAAS mentor pushed him to specify: replace which function (payments, not deposits or credit intermediation), for which segment, under which licensing regime, and with what funding cost compared with a deposit-taking bank. The specified version earned full marks on the evaluation criterion that the sweeping claim had failed.
How long is the BAFI3287 assignment and what referencing style does it use?
Direct answer: Confirm the exact word count and style in your assessment brief — individual finance reports at this level commonly sit between 1,500 and 2,500 words, with tables and reference lists often excluded from the count, and use Harvard referencing, which is RMIT's default business style. Stay within the 10% tolerance band and cite every figure with its source and its date. In fintech this matters more than in most courses: transaction volumes, user numbers, and regulatory status change within a year, and a 2020 figure presented as current evidence undermines an otherwise sound argument. Prefer regulator and central-bank publications over company marketing pages.
Evidence: RMIT's Business school uses RMIT Harvard as its standard referencing style, documented in RMIT's Easy Cite referencing tool. Markers routinely deduct marks for unreferenced statistics, undated market data, or inconsistent Harvard formatting even when the financial analysis is strong.
Example: A Vietnamese RMIT student lost several marks because his e-wallet user figures came from a press release with no date and his in-text citations did not match his reference list. A MAAS pre-submission audit closed the gaps in under an hour — figures re-sourced to central-bank and regulator publications and dated, Harvard entries aligned. On his next BAFI3287 task, clean sourcing recovered marks on a criterion that requires no extra analysis at all.
Frequently asked questions
Is BAFI3287 a hard course?
It is breadth-heavy rather than mathematically hard. There is less quantitative work than in corporate finance, but the course covers many segments quickly and rewards students who keep asking the finance question underneath each technology. Students who treat it as "write about fintech trends" struggle; students who treat it as "apply finance concepts to new delivery models" do well.
Do I need to code or understand blockchain in technical detail?
Usually not. Most BAFI3287 tasks ask for a business and risk analysis, not an implementation. You need enough technical accuracy to avoid errors, but marks come from the financial and regulatory reasoning, not from technical depth.
Can I use a Vietnamese fintech as my case?
Yes, and it often works well — payment intermediaries, e-wallets, and digital lending in Vietnam give you a documented, locally relevant case, and Vietnam's regulatory sandbox is a live example of the regulatory-perimeter question. Source figures from the State Bank of Vietnam or reputable industry reports rather than company marketing, and keep the case in service of the argument.
How current do my sources need to be?
Current enough to be defensible. Use recent data for market facts and date-stamp every figure, while keeping the conceptual frame anchored in peer-reviewed and textbook sources. Building an argument only on news articles is the most common weakness in this course.
What referencing style does BAFI3287 use?
RMIT Harvard is the default for business courses, and it applies to market data as well as academic literature. Always confirm in your own brief and use RMIT's Easy Cite tool to format entries consistently.
Can MAAS help me with BAFI3287?
Yes. MAAS Academic Mentoring coaches you through the assignment with the Outline → Draft → Final model — choosing the right lens, sourcing defensible market evidence, structuring the risk and regulation evaluation, and a pre-submission referencing audit, all with PhD-level mentors. We coach your work; we do not write it for you.
Ready to approach BAFI3287 with a clear strategy?
If you have the fintech case but not the financial argument, that is exactly where a mentor helps most. MAAS Academic Mentoring is an advisory partner — we work alongside you through Outline → Draft → Final so the analysis stays yours and the structure earns the marks. Every engagement is backed by our three-tier outcome guarantee (Pass / Merit / Distinction) and a 90-day warranty.
Bring your BAFI3287 brief and we will match you to a banking and finance mentor — 23% of our 100+ experts hold a PhD — within 48 hours.
Book a free 20-minute BAFI3287 consultation with MAAS Academic Mentoring →
Related guides
- BAFI3182 assignment: how do you approach Financial Markets? — sibling RMIT finance guide on markets and intermediation
- BAFI3230 assignment: how do you approach Corporate Finance? — the valuation-and-capital companion course
- How to approach the ECON1596 Digital Economy assignment? — the economics-side view of platforms, data, and digital markets
- MAAS Academic Mentoring service — 1:1 coaching with PhD-level mentors in your discipline
- Course-code assignment coaching — pillar guide on tackling any unit assignment with a MAAS mentor
References
- Arner, D. W., Barberis, J., & Buckley, R. P. (2016). The evolution of Fintech: A new post-crisis paradigm? Georgetown Journal of International Law, 47(4), 1271–1319.
- Financial Stability Board. (2017). Financial stability implications from FinTech: Supervisory and regulatory issues that merit authorities' attention. https://www.fsb.org/2017/06/financial-stability-implications-from-fintech/
- Merton, R. C. (1995). A functional perspective of financial intermediation. Financial Management, 24(2), 23–41. https://doi.org/10.2307/3665532
- Philippon, T. (2016). The FinTech opportunity (NBER Working Paper No. 22476). National Bureau of Economic Research. https://doi.org/10.3386/w22476
- Thakor, A. V. (2020). Fintech and banking: What do we know? Journal of Financial Intermediation, 41, 100833. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jfi.2019.100833
Tools & resources
- RMIT University. (n.d.). Assessment and exams. Retrieved July 20, 2026, from https://www.rmit.edu.au/students/student-essentials/assessment-and-exams
- RMIT University. (n.d.). Easy Cite referencing tool. Retrieved July 20, 2026, from https://www.rmit.edu.au/library/study/referencing
This article is part of the MAAS Journal series for Vietnamese international students. MAAS Academic Mentoring is an advisory partner — we coach students through the Outline → Draft → Final delivery model with developmental feedback from PhD-level mentors. We do not write or submit work on a student's behalf.