Our specialist BSc Finance degree places considerable emphasis on the key quantitative and analytical skills needed to pursue a career in finance and financial markets. The degree prepares you for a career in the financial environment by providing a technical curriculum to strengthen the link between academia and practice. BSc Finance enables you to acquire a critical understanding of theories, empirical evidence, and practical application whilst maintaining a rigorous academic underpinning. In particular, you will learn about corporate finance, investments, financial institutions and the vast array of sophisticated financial products traded in today’s global financial markets. Furthermore, you will develop the quantitative techniques needed to analyze, in-depth, financial data and financial securities.

Flexibility – subject to optional module choice and successful completion of your first year – it may be possible to change your degree path to either Accounting and Finance or Accounting and Management. (Students who require a Tier 4 visa will need to check this in advance with the Tier 4 regulations which are in place at the time).

Year 1

In the first year, compulsory modules will provide you with the key fundamentals to examine and evaluate modern financial markets. These included:

• Introduction to Financial Accounting
• Introduction to Management Accounting
• Foundations of Finance
• Introduction to Economics
• Quantitative Methods

Further optional modules will be chosen from a range which has in the past include:

• Business and Environment Functions
• The Global Economy
• A foreign language

Year 2

In the second year, you will study three compulsory modules, including:

• Corporate Finance
• Financial Markets and Institutions
• Introduction to Financial Econometrics

By studying these modules you will be able to examine financial issues and the institutions, markets, and securities that facilitate the vast array of financial transactions that occur continuously across global markets. Furthermore, you will acquire numerous quantitative tools that enable you to interpret financial data and price financial securities.

The finance modules are complemented by two compulsory economics modules, including:

• Microeconomics for Finance
• Macroeconomics and International Finance

You will also choose one further module from a selection which has previously included, for example

• Corporate Financial Reporting
• Principles of Business Law
• Auditing and Assurance
• Introduction to Taxation
• A foreign language

Year 3

All of our degrees offer you the option of spending your third year gaining practical experience on a business placement. Business placements are a great way to develop your employment marketability and to engage with employers early in their recruitment pipeline. We actively encourage you to explore this as an option within your degree. Placement requires a minimum of forty weeks of work experience and the placement begins in the summer following completion of the second year, and this then becomes the third year of a four-year degree program. This allows you to really explore and understand your job and to find out if the career or company is for you.

• You will develop your practical skills, confidence, and maturity.
• You can focus on a specific career path -many employers recruit graduates from their placement program.
• You will be able to contextualize your studies better, be more mature in your attitude to work.
• You may decide to draw on your working experiences and access a more fulfilling dissertation research subject.

You will gain invaluable job search and graduate research skills by engaging in the competitive placement recruitment process.

To ensure you are getting the most out of your experience, we support your placement in a number of ways:

First Year Bootcamps and Workshops help you to develop your Placement Strategy and to identify and develop those skills and competencies that will be critical to ensure you are attractive to potential placement employers. These typically involve Employers, Placement Mentors, representatives from Colleges, Societies and the Volunteering Community in Durham.

Second Year Workshops support you through the placement application process and allow you to develop into a supportive student group to travel along the road of gaining a placement together. They enable you to get to know those students who will return with you in the fourth year. Workshops typically involve employers and former placement students.

The DUBS Placement Programme includes a series of employer-led events which take place throughout term 1 and 2 and is open to all first-year and second-year placement students. The skills sessions and networking events allow students to develop essential employability skills as well as providing valuable insight into the recruitment process.

Placement Mentors: We have a mentorship scheme whereby former placement students share their experiences of the application process and placement with first and second-year students and those out on placement. If you become a placement mentor on your return to University you can continue to develop your interpersonal skills and slide back into your University life with another key role which may well develop a new sense of belonging as well as another valuable contribution to your CV...

Placement Tutors: Whilst you are on placement you are assigned a tutor who will visit you, liaise with your employer and ensure you gain the most from your experience.

The Business Placement year fees are set annually by the University.  For the definitive amount of the Business Placement year fees payable please contact our Placement Team.

*The offer of a place on a ‘with placement’ degree does not imply that Durham University Business School guarantees to find the student placement. The Business School, in association with the University, will assist students in finding and applying for placements, but it is the responsibility of the student to apply for and to obtain a placement (which is subject to approval by the Business School). In the event that a student is unable to obtain a placement, transfer to the equivalent ‘non-placement’ program is guaranteed provided the student is eligible to transfer on academic grounds. In line with Home Office rules, students from outside the EU will transfer onto the ‘with business placement’ program only once they have successfully secured a placement (normally at the end of their second year of study). Therefore due to visa requirements, we recommend that international students interested in the business placement year as part of their degree apply for this program when making their application to us via UCAS.

Year 4

In the fourth year you will study one compulsory module:

• Security Investment Analysis

You will also complete a Dissertation which will allow you to analyze, in great depth, your choice of research question in finance. These modules facilitate the development of your theoretical and empirical knowledge of core and topical issues in finance.

You will also choose three modules from a selection which in the past has included:

• Financial Econometrics
• Financial Engineering
• International and Multinational Finance
• Behavioural Finance
• Islamic Economics and Finance
• A foreign language

The course is founded in the disciplines of Finance and Economics and has significant application to practice whilst maintaining a rigorous academic underpinning.