Robert Wardrop

Management Practice Professor of Finance

Director and Co-founder of the Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance (CCAF)

BCom (Queen’s University), MBA (University of Chicago Booth School of Business), MSc (LSE), PhD (University of Cambridge)

My research interests include the sociology of financial markets, trust, comparative institutionalism, innovation, and entrepreneurship. I’m an economic sociologist interested in understanding how and why channels and instruments of finance emerge outside the traditional system and how this impacts regulators, incumbent financial institutions and consumers. I previously had an international career as a professional investor.

I’m part of the Finance subject group at Cambridge Judge Business School, which focuses on the investment and financial decisions of firms and institutions.

My details

Academic area

Finance

Professional experience

Bob is an economic sociologist interested in understanding how and why channels and instruments of finance emerge outside the traditional financial system and how this impacts regulators, incumbent financial institutions and consumers. In addition to his role in the School, Bob is a member of the Steering Committee for the Cambridge Centre for Data-Driven Discovery (C2D3), an interdisciplinary research centre at Cambridge bringing together expertise from across academic departments and industry to drive research into the analysis, understanding, and use of big data. 

Prior to pursuing his academic career in 2010, Bob had an international career as a professional investor, most recently as a Managing Director in the investment group of one of the largest privately-owned companies in the United States where he was responsible for a portfolio of European corporate debt and equity investments. He has held several board directorships and advisory roles with academic, governmental and commercial organisations over the course of both his academic and non-academic career.

Publications

Selected publications

Journal articles

Books, monographs, reports and case studies

Awards and honours

  • Cambridge Judge Business School Teaching Award, 2022

News and insights

We meet alumni from the MBA and Master of Finance (MFin) programmes and ask them how choosing the very popular elective, New Venture Finance, run by Robert Wardrop, Management Practice Professor of Finance, has helped them develop and grow their career in finance and the fintech sector.

Robert Wardrop.

Professor Robert Wardrop talks about why his elective ‘New Venture Finance’ is the most popular choice on the MBA programme and why when he co-founded the Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance (CCAF) in 2015, it was the first of its kind in the world.

2022 Teaching Awards.

Seven members of the Cambridge Judge faculty are awarded teaching prizes for excellence across the Business School's various programmes.

Media coverage

The Fintech Times | 4 April 2022

New initiative to advance suptech for financial supervisors and regulators in low-income countries

The Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance (CCAF) at Cambridge Judge Business School has announced the establishment of the Cambridge SupTech Lab, a new initiative that takes financial supervisors on a journey to shape the future of financial supervision accelerating the development of cutting-edge, globally scalable supervisory technology (suptech) applications.

Financial Times | 7 February 2022

Culture change, CLO training survey, school diversity

Dr Robert Wardrop, Faculty (Professor level) in Management Practice at Cambridge Judge Business School, responded to Andrew Hill’s management challenge. Andrew was asking to send him ‘any examples of cultural or structural change programmes gone wrong, and how you might put them right.’

Credit Collections & Rik Magazine | 26 November 2021

New study highlights progress in fintech regulation in Sub-Saharan Africa

The Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance (CCAF) at the Cambridge Judge Business School today published the report of findings from its “Fintech regulation in Sub-Saharan Africa” study, which provides one of the first overviews of the regulatory landscape in the region, assessing where sectoral and cross-sectoral regulatory frameworks have been established.

Cambridge Independent, 25 April 2021
Regulatory Genome Project is ‘sequencing’ financial regulations worldwide

Finextra, 24 March 2021
Mastercard joins Regulatory Genome Project

Business Weekly, 11 January 2021
Cambridge-Singapore alliance to speed fintech research and commercialisation

Cambridge Business Magazine, 1 August 2015
Common-sense solutions to ethical maze

Biz Ed Magazine, 29 April 2015
Spy games

Forbes, 7 January 2021
Bringing sanity to global financial regulation

Crowdfund Insider, 7 January 2021
The Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance launches collaboration network

Mirage News, 21 December 2020
Cambridge launches Regulatory Genome Project

Business Weekly, 25 October 2020
Cambridge drives FinTech and digital intel deeper into crucial territories

Sigma Live, 21 October 2020
Strategic synergy of the European University of Cyprus with the CCAF

Crowdfund Insider, 25 September 2020
Global cryptoasset benchmarking study: Updates on digital asset ecosystem during period of growth

Crowdfund Insider, 19 September 2019
Second Global Blockchain Report: Enterprise utilisation and network development

City Press, 30 August 2019
How technology is driving a revolution in financial services

Fintek News, 3 June 2019
Cryptoasset global regulations made simple

EXAME, 2 May 2019
The days when we interact with a human in the bank are disappearing quickly

Financial Times, 17 June 2018
Business schools race to offer lessons in blockchain and bitcoin

Atlanta Business Chronicle, 11 May 2018
The world of payments is changing

Crowdfund Insider, 31 January 2018
European alternative finance market expanded by 41 per cent in 2016

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