Course details
This course sits within our Accounting & Finance framework, consisting of a range of specialised courses:
- BA (Hons) Finance
- BA (Hons) Accounting
- BA (Hons) Accounting & Finance
- MAccFinn (Hons) Accounting & Finance
Each of the courses in this framework will give you those vital core skills, as well as offering more specialist options depending on the pathway you choose to pursue. All courses' first year units are the same, allowing you the flexibility to transfer to another pathway at the end of the first year if you wish. This keeps your career options open and enables you to make more informed choices.
Foundation year
Core Units:
- Fundamentals of Business & Management: This unit aims to develop your understanding of the business context across industry and sectors globally. You will cover the key issues and challenges facing businesses going forward and the essential role of people in dynamic, resilient and complex organisations. You will explore key functional business areas including marketing, finance, accounting, economics, people management, and organisational behaviour.
- Academic & Professional Practice: You will build your confidence in both academic and professional skills. This unit will cover the academic skills which will be required at degree level study and you’ll practice them throughout the unit with support from key university services including the library and study skills team. There will also be opportunity for you to reflect on and develop your own professional skills through interactions with employers, careers services and online resources.
- Fusion Business Project: You will undertake a business project based on a real issue or problem. The Fundamentals of Business & Management unit will support you in understanding key issues and challenges which could form the basis for your project. Projects will be undertaken in workplaces, community settings or part of research processes related to your chosen field of study. You will be allocated an academic mentor who will support you in developing and undertaking the project.
Year 1
Our particular focus in the first year is to ensure that you understand diverse areas like law, economics, accounting, business management, quantitative analysis and finance in the context of how a business is run, thus focusing on the connectivity between these areas in the world of business.
Core units:
- Law for Accounting & Finance: You will study the aspects of Law required to operate in the finance sector. You will acquire knowledge of the sources of law in order to understand the potential impacts each source may have on financial practice.
- Economics for Accounting & Finance: You understand the fundamental economic concepts and their applications including the way markets work and their interaction using real-world examples, as well as the impact of economic policies on businesses and society.
- Introduction to Accounting: This unit will give you a solid foundation in the fundamentals of accounting, together with a basic understanding of the regulatory framework. You will be able to prepare financial statements and use a range of management accounting techniques to aid the business decision-making process.
- Quantitative Analysis: This unit will develop your understanding of basic mathematical principles and how they are applied in accounting and finance. It will provide you with the essential techniques used to collect, present, analyse and interpret data and show how quantitative methods may be used to provide reliable management information.
- Introduction to Financial Markets: As an introduction to financial markets, you will gain a level of conceptual understanding that will allow you to critically evaluate the fundamentals of finance and its implications in the current scenario.
- Business Context: This unit will equip you with the understanding of how to translate knowledge in economics, law, statistics, finance, accounting in a business context.
Year 2
The second-year emphasises on embedding subject related skills like a working knowledge of accounting software and excel skills whilst also ensuring that you learn softer skills such as presentation skills, assessment centre practice and CV building experience. The aim is to ensure that you are ready to successfully engage with the placement recruitment process.
Core units:
- Asset Valuation: You will gain a thorough understanding of the structural overview of the financial markets, particularly the role and impact of financial market participants. You will be able to analyse and evaluate equity securities market using appropriate valuation concepts and techniques, particularly fundamental analysis.
- Accounting Information Systems: You will progress and enhance your IT skills through the use and application of industry-standard software. The unit will also provide an understanding of the accounting profession and put the use of such software into context. You will learn how to apply business process thinking in SAP ERP Information systems as tools within financial and management accounting.
- Financial Reporting: You will evaluate and apply the regulatory framework of accounting, prepare basic consolidated accounts in accordance with IFRS, for a simple group and analyse and appraise company performance.
- Money Banking & Financial Markets: This unit aims to provide a solid grounding in monetary economics and the financial system. It seeks to provide a basis for understanding and analysing the working of financial markets and for assessing the relative effectiveness of monetary policy as a means of tackling macroeconomic problems.
- Corporate Financial Management: This unit presents and discusses the importance of financial management to a corporate entity based on the relevant theories. It analyses the business environment in which the financial management decisions are taken both in the short-run and also in the long-run. Further, it demonstrates how capital and risk are linked to financial management and applies key principles, techniques, tools, and instruments to assist in corporate decision-making.
- Management Accounting: You will develop an understanding of basic management account concepts, techniques and practices and the quantitative skills to apply them in an organisational context.
Placement year
You may choose to complete an optional (minimum) 30-week work placement which can be carried out anywhere in the world. The placement year offers a chance to gain experience and make contacts for the future.
Final year
The final year will emphasise on embedding research skills, which will ensure that you are able to apply this important transferable skills to your graduate role. We achieve this by exposing you to the impactful research conducted by our senior academics and professors in the department, therefore enriching your grounding in different methods of research. This will then be applied in either a research study context or to the study of a live company, thus ensuring that you can demonstrate research application.
Core units:
- Risk Modelling & Management: You will gain a broad awareness and understanding of the risks faced within a modern business environment, alongside the risk management processes necessary to control such risks. You will develop the skills to model and analyse risk scenarios, with the application of such techniques allowing for critical analysis and informed decision making.
- Investment Management: This unit will address the theoretical principles and quantitative methodologies which underpin the pricing and valuation of the primary investable asset classes (equities, bonds and property) and their application in practice. It also introduces and differentiates between personal wealth management and institutional fund management.
- Contemporary Issues in Accounting & Finance Research: You will develop an appreciation for current research in accounting and finance and become equipped with a broad range of research skills. Key topics will include hypothesis formation; ethical procedures; questionnaire designs; and quantitative and qualitative methodologies.
Option units Block A (choose two):
- Advanced Accounting Theory & Practice: This unit will develop your understanding of the theoretical aspects of financial reporting and teach you how to apply this to technical issues.
- Entrepreneurship & Business Ventures: The unit covers how individuals and teams build on opportunities to create new businesses or transform existing ones by undertaking entrepreneurial activities. You will learn how to be effective entrepreneurs by looking at the business and personal skills needed to start a business and the critical factors in the survival of start-ups and reasons for failure.
- Perspectives on Business Strategy: This unit gives you insights into the differing perspectives used to develop and implement business strategy. From its roots in finance and economics, the field of strategy has developed its own language, tools, models and methodologies, which are used throughout businesses and other organisations in many parts of the world. This unit introduces you to that language and gives you experience working with the toolkit and understanding its limitations.
- Public Finance & Policy: As Nation-States begin to raise taxes to address unprecedented levels of public debt, we will consider their decisions, targets, and taboos. We will debate the underlying principles and theories on which our tax policies have evolved. This unit aims to provide a technically and academically challenging examination of public finance, in theory and in practice.
Option units Block B (choose one):
- Financial Regulation: The unit will cover the key regulatory theories, forms and rationale of regulation that are highly relevant to those seeking employment within the financial sector. You will engage with, develop and critically analyse regulatory concepts and systems that meet the needs of both the regulator and the regulated.
- Corporate Social Responsibility & Environmental Reporting: This unit will equip you with the ability to account and report on environmental topics with emphasis on both the regulatory and reporting framework needed to account for environmental issues. You will gain the ability to critically appraise the usefulness of such information.
- Derivatives & Alternative Investment: The unit starts with the historical precedents, runs through current developments, and emphasises the technical details of valuation of all derivatives and alternative investment. This unit also provides problem-based analysis of Alternative Investment strategies, focusing on governance and valuation.
Option units Block C (choose one):
- Company Study: You will undertake a project and apply accounting theory to a real example as well as develop your personal skills working within a group such as time management, work-allocation, joint problem-solving, discussion, communication, negotiation, and presentation.
- Research Study: The research study will allow you to enhance your independent learning, critical thinking and reflective skills. It will enable you to demonstrate your ability to formulate a research proposal, collect, analyse and evaluate data pertinent to the chosen contextualised research topic and to write up a report documenting the project methodology, management and outcomes.
Please note that option units require minimum numbers in order to run and may only be available on a semester by semester basis. They may also change from year to year.
