Financial Services major

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“What has been happening on a national scale, is that financial services are no longer just providing one service,” explained Arthur Gudikunst, a professor of finance at Bryant and coordinator of its financial services program.

There are, he said, “both legal changes and organizational changes, which have blurred the distinctions.

“If you call up Merrill Lynch in downtown Providence and want to talk to one of their financial services professionals it’s quite possible that person also has a license to sell you an insurance product, an annuity product,” Gudikunst said. “Your typical stockbroker today is not just a person that buys and sells securities on behalf of a customer, they’re taking a much broader role on providing advice and counsel.

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“So what we’ve attempted to do with the financial services major is to provide the students with a breadth of knowledge and background needed in the new financial services industry.”

“We are trying to respond to the marketplace and offer a major that would suit the industry better,” explained Gene Lai, a professor at the University of Rhode Island and chairperson of its department of finance and insurance.

“It’s a multi-disciplinary major,” said Gudikunst, explaining students must take courses from within five departments.

Bryant, which is one of the region’s most respected business schools, didn’t create new courses or hire all new faculty for its program. Instead, administrators there simply looked at existing offerings in the accounting, finance, marketing, legal studies and actuarial mathematics programs and tailored a program, which they say provides suitable background for those choosing the financial services major, he said.

In addition, school administrators are studying the possibility of adding a financial services concentration to the MBA program, according to Gudikunst.

Twenty-one Bryant students have already signed up for the major, which results in a Bachelor of Science in business administration, with a financial services major, according to Gudikunst. This is a promising turnout, considering the program is really just taking off this fall and school administrators have not yet begun aggressively marketing the new major, he added.

When asked why he chose the new major, senior Andrew Zinberg said: “It’s really versatility, you get to look at the finance area in five different ways instead of one.”

The Connecticut native switched to financial services from a marketing major last spring.

“I started looking at marketing internships and communications internships (last winter),” Zinberg said. “When it came down to it, it wasn’t going to advance me the way I wanted.”

This summer he interned for brokers at Prudential Insurance in Hartford. After graduation next spring, Zinberg said he sees himself working in a brokerage house.

According to Lai, URI needs approval from several different faculty and student organizations, in addition to the Board of Governors of Higher Education, before expanding its roster of majors. Among the majors now offered to the business school’s approximately 1,300 students are: accounting, finance, management, general business, marketing, management science, information systems, and international business. International business was just approved as a major last year, he said.

The various boards reviewing the request must consider a new major’s impact on the budget and whether there is enough faculty to accommodate the program, Lai said. “The provost always looks at whether they can find a job,” he added.

URI’s business school administrators hope to have approval for the financial service major before next fall.

The business school has already hired one new professor, partially to accommodate the proposed new major, Lai said. In addition, they are planning to add a seminar in financial services and a class on mutual funds.

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