Finance

Our BSc Finance is designed to provide you with a core set of technically demanding, yet applications-oriented, skills in finance. It will equip you with essential skills and knowledge to enable you to compete successfully in a competitive jobs market.

Why choose this course?

• We have an excellent reputation for the quality of our teaching. Our academics are professional practitioners in the world of economics and finance who provide specialist advice and in-house training for government departments and City firms and banks, including the Treasury and Bank of England.

• Your tutors are actively working to extend the boundaries of knowledge. Many of our academics are recognised as world-class experts in their fields and their research feeds directly into our teaching programmes.

What you will learn

You will begin by attaining the IT, professional and quantitative skills you need to be successful in this degree. You will gain knowledge of how financial institutions and markets work in the UK, alongside introductory accounting and economics. This will equip you with the skills required to read and understand financial journals or simple balance sheets. You will also have the opportunity to follow your career interests taking modules from a range of options such as portfolio management and behavioural economics and finance.

How you will learn

This BSc Finance is available for full- or part-time study and is taught through a combination of lectures which provide you with foundational knowledge and small-group tutorials which offer you hands-on learning. It has an evening timetable with classes taking place in the evening, so you can balance studies with work or other commitments.

Foundation Year

If you opt for the Foundation Year route, this will fully prepare you for undergraduate study. It is ideal if you are returning to study after a gap, or if you have not previously studied the relevant subjects, or if you didn't achieve the grades you need for a place on your chosen undergraduate degree.

Highlights

• Our BSc Finance is ideal for anyone whose ambition is to work in investment banks and other financial institutions, financial regulators or economic consultancies, as well as those hoping to continue to graduate studies in finance.

• Goldman Sachs and Birkbeck Diversity Scholarships are available for this course for students from Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) backgrounds.

• We bring together research and teaching across economics and finance, mathematics and statistics which creates significant interdisciplinary synergies.

• Birkbeck was ranked in the top 25 universities in the UK for its Economics and Econometrics research in the 2021 Research Excellence Framework.

Careers and employability

On graduating, you will have gained an array of important transferable skills including:

• the ability to analyse data and evaluate trends

• the capacity to assess information critically and solve problems

• effective communication of ideas, findings and recommendations to diverse audiences.

Our finance students go on to build successful careers with a variety of employers in a range of sectors, including:

• government departments

• the Bank of England

• UK regulatory bodies

• commercial banks

• teaching.

Some also progress their studies further at master's level.

We offer a comprehensive careers service - Careers and Enterprise - your career partner during your time at Birkbeck and beyond. At every stage of your career journey, we empower you to take ownership of your future, helping you to make the connection between your experience, education and future ambitions.

Course modules

For information about course structure and the modules you will be studying, please visit Birkbeck’s online prospectus.