Financial engineering

Financial engineering is a multidisciplinary field involving financial theory, the methods of engineering, the tools of mathematics and the practice of programming. It has also been defined as the application of technical methods, especially from mathematical finance and computational finance, in the practice of finance. Despite its name, financial engineering does not belong to any of the fields in traditional engineering. In the United States, the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET) does not accredit financial engineering degrees. In the United States, financial engineering programs are accredited by the International Association of Quantitative Finance.

Financial engineering draws on tools from applied mathematics, computer science, statistics and economic theory. In broadest definition, anyone who uses technical tools in finance could be called a financial engineer, for example any computer programmer in a bank or any statistician in a government economic bureau. However, most practitioners restrict the term to someone educated in the full range of tools of modern finance and whose work is informed by financial theory. It is sometimes restricted even further, to cover only those originating new financial products and strategies.