“We developed our first credit risk models and data science applications based on what we learned in the QFin program.”

Christian Ochs, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of FINcredible

Throughout my BSc studies in Business Administration with a focus on Finance & Accounting, I developed a growing interest in the economics and the underlying mechanisms of financial markets. However, I quickly noticed that my mathematical understanding and my quantitative skills would not be sufficient for a deep-dive into these topics, i.e., in order to keep up with the scientific literature and the very fast-moving industry.

To me, the MSc program in Quantitative Finance (QFin) was the perfect choice, i.e., it offered me the required tools in terms of a strong quantitative education combined with programming challenges. Most importantly, though, the instructors very much cared for us to ask the right questions and develop an economic understanding for the underlying problem. Eventually, the QFin program motivated me to continue my studies and pursue a PhD in Finance – for me, a very challenging path that I have only managed to complete due to my strong analytical background from QFin.

While I have been originally been only interested in the financial industry, the challenges described quickly drew my attention to academia, i.e., I truly enjoy to follow new economic developments and scientific research. Hence, I am very passionate about working as an Assistant Professor in Finance at WU Vienna, with a research focus on sovereign debt management as well as household finance and consumer credit risk.

However, I experienced several turning points in my career, and I am still closely following industry- and entrepreneurial developments. For this reason, I have also founded a university spin-off company, fincredible, in 2017 with fellow colleagues from the Department of Finance, Accounting and Statistics. FINcredible offers digital toolbox to perform credit checks based on an individual’s bank account data, directly on their smartphone or even point-of-sale. FINcredible’s services are used by institutional clients, web-platforms and software providers in different use-cases, e.g., in the real estate market, leasing industry or in e-commerce. As of today (January 2020), FINcredible is part of the KSV1870 Group, Austria’s leading credit agency, and has over 12 employees including other graduates from QFin.

While today I am the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of FINcredible and I am focused on the management and the legal framework of our company, we have developed our first credit risk models and data science applications with the knowledge, we have obtained at WU Vienna and QFin. Also, I am able to follow our new developments today and with a deep understanding of how our models work at their core – something I regard as very important before selling our products to customers.