The E-Finance Lab (EFL), jointly organized by scientists and practitioners, is engaged in internationally competitive basic and applied research. Its purpose is to analyse the industrialization of the financial services sector as well as the restructuring of e-finance value chains and to test corresponding solutions.

There are 25 researchers working in the E-Finance Lab, organized in three layers:

• Customers in E-Finance (e.g. retail customers and corporate finance)
• E-Financial Markets and Market Infrastructures (e.g. algorithmic trading and market regulation)
• IT-Infrastructure: Service Systems in E-Finance (e.g. offshore outsourcing in the banking environment)

Its research aims at the development of new concepts for the optimization of production and distribution as well as for the creation of innovative products and revenue streams.

A comprehensive project is the Frankfurt Cloud, where the EFL coordinates all research activities: e.g. design and testing of cloud management and interaction.

The EFL emphasizes the value of exchanging knowledge with excellent teammates from partner companies. These processes are based on a number of communication channels, such as regularly published newsletters, company seminars and an annual conference with changing topics.

Founded in 2002 the EFL is supported by two public institutions, namely Goethe University Frankfurt and Technical University Darmstadt, as well as by private companies. The latter include Deutsche Bank, Deutsche Börse, DZ Bank Gruppe, Finanz Informatik, IBM, T-Systems, 360T, Interactive Data. Since 2008 it is based at the House of Finance.