Michael Imerman, financial data scientist and associate professor of finance at Claremont Graduate University, appears May 9, 2022, on The Sherman Show as he winds down a sabbatical as a visiting scholar to the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco. At the San Francisco Fed, he has been advising a dedicated fintech group at the bank of innovations in this field and emerging risks. (Standard disclaimer: Dr. Imerman notes the views and opinions he shares here are his own and do not necessarily reflect the San Francisco Fed or the Federal Reserve system.)
Starting his conversation with hosts Jeffrey Sherman and Samuel Lau (2:51), Dr. Imerman defines fintech as “the collision of emerging technologies and financial services.” While financial services providers have been using information technologies for decades, something different has been occurring over the past 10-15 years. “We’ve had tech companies, both big tech – the Google, Amazon, Facebook, Microsoft, Apple – as well as start-ups moving into this space,” he says. “These are companies that historically have had nothing to do with financial services. Over the past 10 years, they’ve moved into the space that has been traditionally occupied by the incumbents: banks, asset managers, insurance companies.”
Among other developments, Dr. Imerman discusses the “shakeup” posed by “neobanks and challenger banks” (13:05), fintech lending (14:17) and the financial “incumbents catching up” with the fintech challengers (16:33). Dr. Imerman stresses importance of regulatory oversight to ensure consumer protection and manage systemic risk at a time when fintech is accelerating and democratizing accessibility to financial services (20:29). Messrs. Imerman, Sherman and Lau also discuss central bank digital currencies (31:32) and what excites Imerman most about the future of financial tech innovation: quantum computing (36:15).
Jeffrey Sherman, DoubleLine’s Deputy Chief Investment Officer, is a thought leader, portfolio manager and public speaker in the industry. Mr. Sherman is a member of DoubleLine’s Fixed Income and Global Asset Allocation committees, and he serves as lead portfolio manager for the firm’s multi-sector and derivative-based strategies. In his role, Mr. Sherman guides the investment teams in developing top-down macro views and collaborative asset allocation processes throughout a market cycle. Additionally, he is a member of DoubleLine’s Executive Management Committee. In 2018, Money Management Executive named Mr. Sherman as one of “10 Fund Managers to Watch” in its yearly special report. Prior to joining DoubleLine in 2009, Mr. Sherman was a Senior Vice President at TCW, where he worked as a portfolio manager and quantitative analyst focused on fixed income and real-asset portfolios. Prior to that, he was a statistics and mathematics instructor at the University of the Pacific and Florida State University. Mr. Sherman taught Quantitative Methods for Level I candidates in the USC/CFALA CFA® Review Program for many years. He holds a B.S. in Applied Mathematics from the University of the Pacific and an M.S. in Financial Engineering from Claremont Graduate University. Mr. Sherman is a CFA® charterholder.
Mr. Lau joined DoubleLine in 2009. He is a Strategist on the Fixed Income Asset Allocation (FIAA) Committee and a contributing member on the Global Asset Allocation and Macro Committees. Mr. Lau is a Portfolio Manager on DoubleLine’s strategic commodity strategy while working in portfolio management and trading for derivatives-based and multi-asset strategies, including DoubleLine's Shiller Enhanced CAPE®, Shiller Enhanced International CAPE®, Real Estate and Income, and Multi-Asset Trend strategies. He also co-hosts the Sherman Show (Twitter @ShermanShowPod, ShermanShow@Doubleline.com) and Monday Morning Minutes (Twitter @DLineMinutes, Minutes@Doubleline.com) podcasts. Prior to DoubleLine, Mr. Lau was a Vice President at TCW where he worked under Jeffrey Gundlach as a Research Analyst in the Mortgage Group. He holds a B.S. from the University of Wisconsin, Madison and an MBA from the Marshall School of Business at the University of Southern California.
