Our specialist BSc Banking and Finance (including Year Abroad) enables you to develop a theoretical and practical knowledge of both disciplines and gives you an opportunity to spend your third year abroad. In support of your finance module lectures, you are taught the key theoretical underpinnings as to why banks exist and how banks operate in the modern economy. In your final year, you build on this knowledge to explore and critique current issues in modern banking such as bank risk management, international banking, and banking regulation and supervision. Your learning experience is provided by banking specialists who are active banking researchers and bring practical banking experience to the classroom. Studying banking at Essex provides you with a thorough grounding in the key issues relevant to today’s global financial institutions and markets, and the skills to evaluate them. The knowledge and skills acquired will prove invaluable in any financial sector career.

Banks and other financial institutions are looking for numerate, articulate graduates with critical and analytical skills, and our accounting, finance and banking courses equip you with this. We produce graduates with the knowledge to start their careers in the financial sector, in areas such as banking, stock broking, derivatives, insurance, and regulation. Our graduates now have careers as traders, investment bankers, equity analysts, fund managers, risk managers and researchers, and work at leading City and government institutions like the Bank of England, Citigroup, Deloitte, Deutsche Bank, Merrill Lynch, Industrial Bank of Japan and HM Treasury. In addition, many now work in managerial positions in business and commercial sectors. Our academic staff have research and consultancy links with top investment and commercial banks, and have worked for financial institutions, so can give you first-hand advice on employment prospects in the financial sector. We maintain relationships with public, private and voluntary sector businesses, and work with employers on internships and placement opportunities for students. As well as having the knowledge to start your career in the financial sector, all our courses are also an ideal base for pursuing postgraduate studies, with many graduates going on to gain Masters degrees and PhDs.