Course details
This course sits within our Accounting & Finance framework, consisting of a range of specialised courses:
- MAccFinn (Hons) Accounting & Finance
- BA (Hons) Accounting
- BA (Hons) Accounting & Finance
- BA (Hons) 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.
Contact hours and assessment
Details of the assessment methods and contact hours for each unit of the course can be found in the programme specification.
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
Economics for Accounting & Finance: You'll develop an understanding of the operation of markets, including the interaction between related markets along with an understanding of the impact of economic policies on business and society in the context of a global economy.
Introduction to Accounting: This unit aims to provide you with a sound foundation in the fundamentals of accounting, together with a basic understanding of the regulatory framework.
Introduction to 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.
Law for Accounting & Finance: This unit will embed the core legal principles and concepts within the legal environment for a graduate operating in the finance sector.
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.
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.
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
Management Accounting: Providing you with the practical ability to deal with fundamental cost and management accounting issues.
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'll expand upon your theoretical knowledge of financial accounting and critically apply the principles to a consideration of alternative methods of accounting and to the practice of accounting in more advanced applications.
Corporate Financial Management: You'll cover the theory relating to investment, financing and dividend decisions and apply appropriate techniques to assist with the three key decision areas.
You then have the option to pick one module from each of these sections (two in total):
Options A
Business Tax Planning: This unit will equip you with a working knowledge of the UK taxation system as it impacts upon business decision making and encourages you to critically evaluate the principles underlying the UK system of taxing business.
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 the equity securities market using appropriate valuation concepts and techniques, particularly fundamental analysis.
Options B
Money Banking and 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.
Audit & Control: The unit's main emphasis is on the statutory audit process, although the work of internal audit will also be considered.
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.
Penultimate Year
The penultimate 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
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.
Perspectives on Business Strategy: You'll gain an insight into the differing perspectives used to develop and implement business strategy.
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.
Choose one of these option units:
Company Study: This unit will enhance your skills in both computerised and non-computerised information retrieval, analysis and presentation.
Research Study: The aim of the unit is to provide you with the opportunity to develop skills in conducting effectively a research project, and acquire specialist knowledge within an area relevant to your programme of study.
Choose one of these option units:
Advanced Management Accounting: You'll gain an understanding of the role of management accounting in all aspects of management control systems, particularly in the development and use of performance management systems and the strategic control of organisations.
Financial Regulation: The unit provides insight into key financial regulatory theories, forms and rationale of regulation that are highly relevant to those seeking to operate within the financial services sector.
Business Taxation: The unit will cover the effects of taxation in the various stages in the expansion of a business, from sole trader to corporate group and provide you with a thorough understanding of the tax regime faced by businesses in their most common forms and of the more common tax planning strategies that may be adopted.
International Taxation: The aim of this unit is to provide a technically and academically challenging examination of the issues in international taxation faced by multinational corporations and individuals.
Corporate Social Responsibility & Environmental Reporting: This unit will equip you with the ability to account and report on environmental topics with emphasis on both regulatory as well as the reporting framework needed to account for environmental issues. You will gain the ability to critically appraise the usefulness of such information.
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.
Final Year
The final year requires you to study at a Master's level and acquire proficiency in areas like Financial Econometrics, FinTech and Derivatives; all specialisms required to work in the capital and financial markets.
Core units
International Corporate Finance: The aims of this unit are to address the importance of the corporate finance function in an internationally diverse corporation and to offer a framework for assisting corporate decision makers in a complex, dynamic and inherently uncertain external environment.
Portfolio Construction & Theory: Gain knowledge of finance theory and how to structure portfolios of financial assets in this context.
Economics of Money & Financial Markets: Understand and analyse the working of various financial markets, providing you with the tools necessary to analyse and evaluate the factors that drive these markets and the role they play in the wider economy.
Financial Econometrics: Mathematical, programming and statistical tools used in the real world for analysing and modelling financial data. You'll use these tools to model asset returns, the stock, bond and exchange rate, and measure risk using different software.
Choose two option units:
Risk Management: The focus of this unit is on the key principles and theories that underpin investment decisions, such as the main characteristics of portfolios (stocks and bonds) and how to calculate their risk.
Derivatives: Understand the principles and practical aspects of derivatives investment and risk management, focusing on the conceptual and analytical aspects of derivatives.
Data Processing and Analytics: The unit aims to develop student knowledge and skills in the evolving areas of Data Modelling, Data Analytics and Big Data Analytics. Students develop an understanding of data design, implementation and use of data-driven systems. Moreover, they learn how to model data and big data, discover knowledge within the data and deal with the dimensionality of the data. Overall, they develop critical understanding of the methodologies and techniques to cope with Data and Big Data, i.e. data of high volume, high velocity and high variety, utilising the appropriate platform (e.g. Hadoop, Storm, Spark, MongoDB).
FinTech: Focusing on the interaction between finance and technology, this unit covers how the economy has been affected by the new digital era, characterised by technologically-enabled innovations in the provision of financial services.
