Talk:Financial engineering

Redirect
This seems at present to be a bit of a non-article.. at least it would be better named financial engineering... but would it be better to have this title redirect to a different title? Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 22:22, 29 Feb 2004 (UTC)


 * Done, and yes I'll look to improve this from a financial engineering class description into a real article soon. - Taxman 13:46, May 7, 2004 (UTC)

There are two very different meanings of the phrase "financial engineering". There is no point in continuing to add just one of the definitions above the selection - that's the whole point of a disambiguation list. TGreg Dec 23, 2005

You're missing the point
Please pay attention. Even though when *you* say "financial engineering", you might mean "computational finance", other people mean something very different! That is why this article has been set up as a disambiguation page. It allows for *both* possibilities of the phrase - NOT JUST YOURS.


 * "Financial Engineering" (an insulting term to engineers everywhere, every bit as rancid as badge "engineering") was part of my syllabus during my undergrad university years - and I'm an engineer, for crying out loud. Basically, it's all about designing Ponzi schemes. Nothing more, nothing less. It's just a euphemism for Ponzi Scheme Design. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 94.66.182.64 (talk) 00:09, 27 September 2011 (UTC)

Two more meanings of financial engineering
I have seen "financial engineering" used to mean at least two other things: reorganisation of a company's finances in both a positive sense (removing a block to investment) and a negative sense verging on Enron-style fraud. 91.110.238.30 (talk) 17:34, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

Reinsurance?
I really don't think that this disamb page should link to financial reinsurance. Yes, reinsurance is an example of "financial engineering" but that only means that it should be included (along with hundreds of other examples) in a List of financial engineering topics, not a disamb page. Zain Ebrahim (talk) 22:03, 9 August 2008 (UTC)
 * I agree with this. I am going to redirect. Gary King  ( talk ) 19:57, 20 March 2009 (UTC)
 * No, I think you misunderstand. Computational finance is a *methodology*, whereas financal reinsurance is a specific type of *transaction*. They are very different from each other, with little overlap. Financial engineering is an expression which can refer to EITHER the *method* OR to the *transaction*. By putting in the redirect, you are indicating that a method and a transaction are the same.  That is the point of disambiguation pages, isn't it? If an expression refers to different topics, then readers can decide which topic they want. You've decided on their behalf - and your decision will be wrong half the time. On this basis, I am reverting your edit. ThirteenthGreg (talk) 12:32, 21 March 2009 (UTC)

New article
Although there is some point to the older complaints in this talk page, I think the term "financial engineering" has entered general use, and needs an article rather than a redirection to computational finance. I've done a draft.AaCBrown (talk) 21:29, 22 July 2012 (UTC)

History of financial engineering programs
Seems strange to highlight that NYU Poly's program is the first to be certified by the IAFE and exclude actual history, like the first financial engineering program (I believe in the US that is Carnegie Mellon's). --C S (talk) 01:16, 4 June 2013 (UTC)

Criticism of financial engineering
Someone seems to randomly remove Taleb's name for criticism of financial engineering first on grounds that 1) Taleb's work is not peer reviewed (Taleb has peer-reviewed work and his criticism is highly cited), or 2) someone criticized Taleb in a peeer reviewed journal, American Statistician (which makes it in a way valid since academics make criticism worthy of discussion by publishing on it). But Taleb had an article in same American Statistician. Removing criticism is not healthy. It would be good to add, remove references from RS. Limit-theorem (talk) 13:36, 20 April 2015 (UTC)

Needs to start with a definition
The page doesn't start with a definition. I would say "financial engineering is designing contracts so that the the financial payoffs align with each party's preferences. For example, designing an options contract that both covers the risks of retail clients and the trading strategies of marketmakers." Another example is diversifying risk by letting investors provide a partial share of many loans, rather a single loan. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mdnahas (talk • contribs) 17:33, 1 February 2023 (UTC)

I also believe this page needs to start with a clear-cut definition. Much of this article does not sufficiently explain (to a layperson) what financial engineers do. As someone who is relatively uneducated in the topic of modern finance, this article only explained to me what financial engineers help banks achieve.

To use a simile, it is as if the article on "rocket engineer" only said that they "enabled aerospace firms to put satellites into orbit and transport people and objects to foreign planetary bodies". FlintTD (talk) 21:47, 2 February 2023 (UTC)