JDX FinTech - Data Science

Background

JDX is a global consulting company specialising in aligning bespoke, flexible resourcing solutions to financial services clients in areas of change management, remediation, technology and advisory projects.

With over 500 employees at nine offices across Europe, Switzerland, the US and Asia Pacific, JDX is well positioned to support clients in the financial services and insurance sectors across multiple geographical locations.

JDX FinTech is the technology, data and quantitative arm of the JDX Group, providing expertise at all stages in the design, development, delivery and implementation of software services and products, as well as delivering bespoke data science projects with a focus on machine learning, big data, and predictive analytics. Clients are typically top-tier financial services organisations, as well as financial market intermediaries.

The Challenge

While JDX FinTech has considerable in-house skills and the ability to train itself on financial markets, products, regulation etc, the organisation had a need for some deep technical training, as Greg Hannah, CEO of JDX Fintech Solutions explains.

“We had a requirement for external training for eight of our FinTech consultants that would give them the technical skills and conceptual understanding to enable them to deliver Data Science projects to our clients. This would need to be a programme that included concepts, programming, and lots of work around Machine Learning and Big Data techniques.

“The challenge is that our consultants are out working on projects at client sites all the time, so they can’t come off-site for extended periods of time to do eight to ten days of training. It’s not practical and it’s disruptive to the service. We needed a solution that would train them to a high standard while not being disruptive to our clients.”

The Solution

Framework Training was recommended to JDX as a training company that could deliver a flexible solution. JDX FinTech added Framework Training to a shortlist of three potential suppliers and awarded the work to Framework Training after recognising their flexibility in the different ways they would deliver the training programme.

“Once we had made our challenge clear to Framework Training, we worked together to deliver a detailed training programme,” continues Greg Hannah. “We spent quite a bit of time together working on defining content and scheduling how the programme was going to work.”

“The programme developed and delivered by Framework Training allowed our consultants to come offsite for scheduled sessions. There were also remote sessions, evening sessions, homework and projects that provided a good mix and allowed us to get a lot of training done over the course of six months, but without the disruption to our clients. That was important to us, and it all worked really well.”

“The trainers provided were very good and knew their stuff, offering a strong balance of theory and practice, and allowing our
consultants to get their hands dirty with real-world content. Our consultants were very pleased.” The Framework Training instruction team for JDX was composed of a Big Data/Finance specialist, a Statistical Analysis specialist, and a Python expert. The Data Science Training Programme was delivered over 26 sessions.

The programme explored everything from Statistical Analysis, developing applications using statistics in the context of financial
trading data, Machine Learning, Categorisation, and Big Data technologies.

The instructor-led training programme provided a blend of classroom and out-of-hours remote delivery with self-study as an optimal approach. The course structure minimised the impact on consultants’ availability for billable work whilst maximizing the efficiency of the learning process by allowing significant opportunities to assimilate the course content in small increments.