Center for Financial Services (CFS)

Director

Kathleen Weiss Hanley

Bolton-Perella Chair in Finance

Co-Editor, Quarterly Journal of Finance

Co-Director, FinTech Minor

Email: kwh315@lehigh.edu

Assistant Director

Meg Foley Wolf

Email: maff02@lehigh.edu

Overview

The Center for Financial Services (CFS) seeks to bridge theory and practice to promote a collaborative exchange of ideas on critical issues affecting the financial services. By leveraging faculty, alumni, and industry experts, the Center aims to bring the latest developments in research and practice together to stimulate discussion and generate new ideas for education and knowledge in the field of financial services. 

The CFS hosts a variety of conferences, from panel discussions to full-day events, to provide academics, alumni, financial services professionals, and students with an opportunity to discuss and debate current challenges facing financial services. In addition, the Center highlights academic research that may be useful to industry professionals. 

Faculty Expertise

The Perella Department of Finance faculty are actively engaged in intellectual discovery and regularly publish in leading finance journals including the Journal of Finance, Journal of Financial Economics, Journal of Accounting and Economics, Review of Financial Studies, Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, and Journal of Accounting Research. Their work has been widely cited and incorporated into both finance curricula and the practice of industry professionals. 

Undergraduate and Graduate Program Information

The Center oversees the Financial Services Laboratory (FSL) which serves as the vehicle for understanding, creating, and employing financial data and software on the Lehigh University campus.

Collaboration – Universities and Industry

The Center annually co-hosts the Conference on Financial Market Regulation (CFMR) with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, the Center for Financial Policy at the University of Maryland, and the CFA Institute. The goal of the conference is to bring together participants from academia, industry, government, and the SEC for an exchange of views on topics of relevance to the Commission. 

The CFS regularly sponsors in-personal and virtual panel discussions on industry topics such as the boost in IPO/SPAC activity, impact of the pandemic on the financial services, ESG investing, and blockchain technologies. 

The Center also closely collaborates with the Lehigh Wall Street Council, an alumni affinity  group, whose mission is to educate and assist Lehigh students in their efforts to find career and internship opportunities in the financial world.