The Gillmore Centre for Financial Technology at Warwick Business School and the University of Delaware’s Alfred Lerner College of Business and Economics have announced a new transatlantic Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) that will strengthen joint research and faculty exchange in fintech.
The partnership was formally launched in early November during the “Unlocking the Potential of PropTech” conference, hosted by the FutureFinance.AI Research Group at the Gillmore Centre. The two-day program brought together scholars, industry innovators and policymakers for roundtables, research presentations and technology showcases exploring the future of property and financial technology.
This collaboration directly aligns with Lerner College’s strategic priority of pioneering scholarship, which emphasizes bold research, cross-disciplinary partnerships and global engagement that produces knowledge with meaningful societal and economic impact. Under the MoU, the Gillmore Centre and the Lerner College will pursue several joint initiatives, including research publications, faculty exchanges, visiting scholar programs and co-organized international seminars.
“Launching this partnership at our FutureFinance.AI conference is deeply symbolic,” said Ram Gopal, professor of information systems management and director of the Gillmore Centre. “By combining the strengths of the Gillmore Centre and Lerner College, we are building a dedicated engine for innovation. This is about creating research with real-world impact for the property and finance sectors.”
“We are thrilled to partner with the Gillmore Centre, a recognized leader in fintech research,” said Oliver Yao, dean of UD’s Lerner College. “This alliance reflects Lerner’s commitment to pioneering scholarship and allows us to leverage our collective expertise to explore new frontiers in financial technology, with immediate relevance to the proptech themes being discussed at this groundbreaking conference.”
“FinTech is evolving at an extraordinary pace, and solving its biggest challenges requires interdisciplinary, international collaboration,” said Gang Wang, associate professor of management information systems (MIS) and co-director of the Fintech Initiatives at UD, who will help oversee the collaboration.
“This partnership gives our Lerner faculty, students and the broader UD FinTech community a unique opportunity to work with world-class scholars at the Gillmore Centre, advancing research on financial inclusion and digital transformation, AI-enabled innovation, and the technologies reshaping property and financial services.”
The conference’s first day highlighted innovations reshaping property transactions, such as AI applications in real estate. The second day, “PropTech and FinTech Frontiers,” showcased research from scholars across the United Kingdom, United States and Singapore on large language models, market communication and next-generation forecasting tools.
By establishing a formal framework for sustained collaboration, the MoU strengthens the Lerner College’s role as a global contributor to fintech scholarship and advances its mission to generate research that informs industry, guides policymakers, and shapes the future of technology-driven markets.