Introducing your course
Find out what it's like to study Finance at Lancaster University Management School.
11th for Accounting and Finance in the UK
QS World University Rankings (2023)
13th for Accounting and Finance
The Guardian University Guide (2024)
15th for Accounting and Finance
The Times and Sunday Times Good University Guide (2024)
BSc Finance can be a truly transformative degree programme. We have strong connections to industry and provide opportunities for internships in the City of London and Shanghai. This flexible programme is designed to prepare you for a successful career in investment and finance through a perfect balance of academic theory and practical experience.
You will learn the practical skills needed to be a future leader in this challenging and exciting arena, and over the course of your degree, you will have plenty of opportunities to tailor your studies as your interests evolve.
You will begin by learning the bedrock of finance theory and methodology and move on to study programming for financial applications, portfolio management, international financial markets, and advanced corporate finance.
Your first year includes Accounting and Finance, Quantitative Methods for Finance and Investment, plus Microeconomics and Macroeconomics.
Second-year students learn about Corporate Finance, Financial Engineering, Econometrics and Programming for Finance Applications.
In your final year, you choose all your modules, from Portfolio Management, Financial Markets, Bloomberg Analysis and Advanced Corporate Finance.
Throughout your studies, you will be led by academics at the frontier of financial research. Our researchers work on major European projects, including investigating how to apply artificial intelligence to banking, and on the art, precision and effectiveness of factor investing and hedge fund strategies. We have developed strong links with the Bank of England, top asset management companies, financial regulators and economists across the world. Our connections with Invesco allow us to deliver joint conferences and seminars, providing you with insights from both top academics and industry professionals.
There is the opportunity to study Python, the programming language which is a key component of finance technology, and much of the degree content is relevant and desirable to Chartered Financial Analysts.
We will support you in finding internship opportunities in leading investment banks, asset management and insurance companies. We have established a highly-competitive internship exchange programme with Shanghai, open only to a small number of BSc Finance students and subject to international travel restrictions. This allows successful students to spend two months between their second and third years working with the Bank of Shanghai in a global financial hub.
Our Financial Services Careers Hub offers unique opportunities to access the world of finance and to prepare you for a successful career in a competitive industry. Finance Careers Coaches bring a wealth of financial services industry experience to the programme, for example through delivering a third-year Financial Markets module, supporting Lancaster students across the Financial Services industry. We work one-to-one with students, whether you are in your final year looking beyond your studies or in your first and applying for Investment Banking and Asset Management Spring Weeks.
Our graduates leave as independent thinkers, problem solvers and skilled communicators. They have the hard skills that investment and financial firms are looking for, and they are incredibly well prepared for interview and entry assessment. Our graduates’ ability to analyse information quickly and precisely, respond to challenges, and work with others makes them highly attractive to employers.
All our Accounting and Finance degrees prepare you for a wide variety of careers in business, with many of our graduates working with professional firms and financial institutions, as well as large commercial and local government organisations. Roles include trainee accountants, finance managers and banking advisors.
Your degree will also equip you with highly desirable transferable skills which have helped recent graduates find work in the fields of financial customer service, IT support and marketing and communications. Many of our graduates also continue their academic studies and embark on Master's degrees.
Lancaster University is dedicated to ensuring you not only gain a highly reputable degree, you also graduate with the relevant life and work-based skills. We are unique in that every student is eligible to participate in The Lancaster Award which offers you the opportunity to complete key activities such as work experience, employability awareness, career development, campus community and social development. Visit our employability section for full details.
Lancaster University Management School has an award-winning careers team to provide a dedicated careers and placement service offering a range of innovative services for management school students. Our high reputation means we attract a wide range of leading global employers to campus offering you the opportunity to interact with graduate recruiters from day one of your degree.
A level ABB
GCSE Mathematics grade B or 6 (Applicants with a GCSE Maths grade 5 considered on a case-by-case basis), English Language grade C or 4
IELTS 6.5 overall with at least 5.5 in each component. For other English language qualifications we accept, please see our English language requirements web pages.
International Baccalaureate 32 points overall with 16 points from the best 3 Higher Level subjects
BTEC Distinction, Distinction, Merit
We welcome applications from students with a range of alternative UK and international qualifications, including combinations of qualifications. Further guidance on admission to the University, including other qualifications that we accept, frequently asked questions and information on applying, can be found on our general admissions web pages.
Contact Admissions Team + 44 (0) 1524 592028 or via ugadmissions@lancaster.ac.uk
Lancaster University offers a range of programmes, some of which follow a structured study programme, and some which offer the chance for you to devise a more flexible programme to complement your main specialism.
Information contained on the website with respect to modules is correct at the time of publication, and the University will make every reasonable effort to offer modules as advertised. In some cases changes may be necessary and may result in some combinations being unavailable, for example as a result of student feedback, timetabling, Professional Statutory and Regulatory Bodies' (PSRB) requirements, staff changes and new research. Not all optional modules are available every year.
This full-year module is a self-contained introduction to Economics, and can be taken by students both with and without prior knowledge of the subject. It is divided into three parts. The first part provides a thorough introduction to Microeconomics (including the theory of demand, costs and pricing under various forms of market structure, and welfare economics). The second part provides a thorough introduction to Macroeconomics (including national income analysis, monetary theory, business cycles, inflation, unemployment, and the great macroeconomic debates).
The third part of the module, taught in parallel with the first two parts, first covers the key mathematical tools required for a good understanding of Economics (including linear and nonlinear equations, and differentiation), and then shows how the key Micro- and Macroeconomics ideas can help us understand the world around us. In this part, you will participate in economic experiments involving games with and without strategic behaviour. We will also discuss the lessons from the Great Depression and the Great Recession, speculative attacks and currency crises, inequality, democracy and growth, government deficits and inflation, and the macroeconomic implications of Brexit and Covid-19.
This course provides a comprehensive introduction to the basic concepts and techniques of Accounting and Finance, which include financial accounting, managerial finance, and financial statement analysis.
An important element of this course is that it provides exposure to the business and financial environment within which the discipline of Accounting and Finance operates, using real-world financial data for actual companies.
The course covers concepts, techniques and interpretive skills that relate to the external financial reporting of companies and their relationship to the stock market, and to the use of accounting information for internal management purposes.
This non-credit-bearing module will provide you with the opportunity to undertake a personal skills audit as part of the CV assignment. It will enable you to identify your current skills level and begin to collect evidence of skills acquisition. It will cover a detailed analysis of the individual in terms of personality, skills, goals, interests and career ideas, and self-development. It would include organisation recruitment processes, including consideration of what organisations are looking for, the nature of ‘transferable skills’ and how these can be developed, and how organisations can select and train people.
The key aim of this module is to equip you with essential mathematical and statistical skills relevant to the disciplines of accounting and finance. The module aims to prepare you for more quantitatively-focused subjects offered across the whole suite of Accounting and Finance undergraduate programmes.
This is a 40-credit module that spans across three semesters. In Michaelmas term, you will cover the topics in mathematics such as functions, differentiation, integration, matrix algebra. In Lent term, the module will introduce the basic statistics. You will learn some of the features of the financial data, the rules of probability and hypothesis testing. In Summer term, the module will introduce financial markets with some emphasis on risk, efficiency and operation.
This is the second component of three and consists of further employability skills such as applying for graduate jobs or postgraduate study; a 'refresh' of the application process; signposting to extra support, constructing a Personal Career Plan, plus an introduction to and preparation for the third component.
This module provides a detailed analysis of four key Finance paradigms:
This module provides an introduction to the theoretical concepts and applications of econometrics. Econometric techniques taught include bivariate regression, multiple regression, and two-stage least squares. The importance and relevance of statistical and diagnostic testing are emphasised in the context of econometrics applications.
You will also learn how to use STATA, a statistical package that is used by many academic, governmental, and non-governmental institutions to conduct research and consulting.
This module covers project evaluation methods, risk, return and the cost of capital (including the capital asset pricing model), corporate financing (including dividend policy and capital structure) and an introduction to options.
At the heart of many real management problems are data that needs to be described, analysed and interpreted. Statistical methods are important across the range of Management School subject areas (e.g. accounting and finance, marketing, economics, operations management and operational research). This module develops your ability to describe, analyse and interpret data soundly, making effective use of computer software.
Developing these skills will also help you demonstrate to prospective employers that you have practical skills that can immediately be put to good use to solve problems for organisations either in the public or private sector.
The lecture materials, and the problems you are asked to solve in workshops, reflect the problems that organisations have to solve in practical situations where data analysis skills are required.
This module provides an overview of the design and main features of accounting information systems (AIS). It introduces methods used by business to meet the financial information needs of external parties and management and includes systems used for collecting, recording and storing transactions data, internal controls and effective design of AIS. It also provides an introduction to auditing, explaining why audit independence is a key factor in this profession. The module also examines some specific topics in auditing and relates these to the AIS syllabus, including materiality, going concern and the formulation of audit opinions.
This module provides an introduction to the use of management accounting information for management purposes. This includes an examination of cost-volume profit analysis, the concepts of direct and indirect costs, and various costing methods. The importance of budgets to organisations and their impact on performance are also discussed.
This module examines some of the main features of financial reporting by UK companies, the associated regulatory requirements and the conceptual bases of these (UK Companies Acts and international accounting standards). Also examined are specific reporting topics of current interest and concern, including the basics of consolidated accounting.
The third component of a three part module taught throughout your studies and consists of a project utilising basic skills required by most employers, e.g. report writing, presentations, IT skills, etc. within the context of a topic related to the student's probably employment sector target, e.g. finance, auditing, accounting, etc..
This module aims to extend students’ understanding of management accounting, focusing on three distinct approaches to the discipline: conceptual, practical and applied. The conceptual material in the course will seek to develop critical thinking skills for students by inviting them to consider the wide range of philosophical and economic theories that fit with the management accounting paradigm. The practical element of the course will introduce students to new management accounting techniques, including the role of uncertainty in management accounting, management control systems and the use of transfer pricing. The applied material will centre on a series of case study classes in which students will be required to engage with case study material and articulate their ideas about how to help the case organisation solve the particular problems that it faces.
This course equips students with the knowledge to apply corporate finance theory to real-world situations. It builds on and extends the concepts covered in the basic financial management courses and introduces advanced topics in Corporate Finance. The major topics covered include capital budgeting, capital structure, corporate valuation, real options, equity financing for startups, IPOs, leasing, short term financing, merger and acquisitions, and corporate governance
This module deals with accounting for complex entities, addressing concepts, issues and techniques.
It examines accounting for business combinations, goodwill and strategic investments (associates and joint ventures), and other aspects of consolidation, foreign currency translation, accounting for leases, all within the context of modern accounting theory.
This module develops students' critical evaluation of advanced financial accounting issues and places this within the international accounting context. Topics covered include the accounting treatments of taxation, pensions and share-based payments. The module also introduces theoretical foundations and empirical research on issues of relevance to accounting practitioners and accounting regulators in topic areas such as earnings management, building on and extending the basics introduced in other modules
The objective of this module is to offer a practical introduction to the workings of today’s financial markets and institutions built on a theoretical base. Moving beyond the descriptions and definitions provided by other textbooks and UK university courses in the field, this module encourages students to understand the connection between the theoretical concepts and their real-world applications.
Topics include foreign exchange, stock markets, bond markets, derivatives, central banks' monetary policy and financial crises. We also look at how trading in financial markets takes place. This module prepares students for successful careers in the financial services industry or successful interactions with financial institutions, whatever their future careers.
This module provides a foundation in banking by familiarising students with the basic business activities of banks, and illustrates the role of banks for the economy while retaining a bank-level rather than a macroeconomic perspective. It also highlights the role of regulation and supervision in the banking industry to differentiate banking from all other industries, and how crises reshape regulation in banking. The objective of this module is to introduce banking and what is special about it into the curriculum to equip students with a basic foundation to pursue careers in the banking industry.
This module provides knowledge that is important to those concerned with financial management in a multinational setting. Areas covered include the relationships between exchange rates, interest rates and inflation rates, forward, futures and options markets, and corporate exchange rate risk management.
The aim of this module is to equip students with the tools necessary to enable them to make the core investment management decisions that managers face on a daily basis as well as the knowledge as to where they can find the information necessary to apply those tools. This course is an introduction to investment analysis, with emphasis on the pricing of equity securities. This course covers fundamental concepts and key issues in asset pricing; modern portfolio theory and its applications; equilibrium theories of asset pricing; portfolio performance evaluation; mutual funds and hedge funds. It provides an entry point to advanced-level subjects and foundational knowledge on the valuation and arbitrage of investment assets.
The main purpose of this module is to give students a thorough grounding in the materials expected of a professional financial analyst and thus prepare students to take the Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) Level 1 examination.
As such, it will introduce and review the theories, methods and professional standards relating to financial analysis; help students apply the knowledge and skills developed during this and other modules to the investment problems encountered by professional financial analysts; and prepare students to sit and pass the February CFA Level-1 exam administered by the CFA Institute.
This module is designed as an introduction to econometric and time series methods for the analysis and research of financial assets and capital markets relationships. The focus will be on the analysis of financial data and econometric methods for modelling of financial time series, risk management and forecasting. The key objectives are to i) explain how econometric methods can be used to learn about the behaviour of financial assets; ii) endow students with practical experience of analysing financial data useful for research and practical work in the quantitative finance industry using basic statistical software packages; and iii) endow students with the relevant quantitative skills for advanced studies in MSc programmes.
This module gives you an understanding of the economic and social impact of taxation and how these impacts influence the formation of tax policy. It covers the basic principles of UK income tax, corporation tax and other taxes, and teaches you the skills needed to perform basic tax computations.
Our annual tuition fee is set for a 12-month session, starting in the October of your year of study.
Our Undergraduate Tuition Fees for 2024/25 are:
Home | International |
---|---|
£9,250 | £24,475 |
There may be extra costs related to your course for items such as books, stationery, printing, photocopying, binding and general subsistence on trips and visits. Following graduation, you may need to pay a subscription to a professional body for some chosen careers.
Specific additional costs for studying at Lancaster are listed below.
Lancaster is proud to be one of only a handful of UK universities to have a collegiate system. Every student belongs to a college, and all students pay a small college membership fee which supports the running of college events and activities. Students on some distance-learning courses are not liable to pay a college fee.
For students starting in 2023 and 2024, the fee is £40 for undergraduates and research students and £15 for students on one-year courses. Fees for students starting in 2025 have not yet been set.
To support your studies, you will also require access to a computer, along with reliable internet access. You will be able to access a range of software and services from a Windows, Mac, Chromebook or Linux device. For certain degree programmes, you may need a specific device, or we may provide you with a laptop and appropriate software - details of which will be available on relevant programme pages. A dedicated IT support helpdesk is available in the event of any problems.
The University provides limited financial support to assist students who do not have the required IT equipment or broadband support in place.
In addition to travel and accommodation costs, while you are studying abroad, you will need to have a passport and, depending on the country, there may be other costs such as travel documents (e.g. VISA or work permit) and any tests and vaccines that are required at the time of travel. Some countries may require proof of funds.
In addition to possible commuting costs during your placement, you may need to buy clothing that is suitable for your workplace and you may have accommodation costs. Depending on the employer and your job, you may have other costs such as copies of personal documents required by your employer for example.
The fee that you pay will depend on whether you are considered to be a home or international student. Read more about how we assign your fee status.
Fees are set by the UK Government annually, and subsequent years' fees may be subject to increases. Read more about fees in subsequent years.
You will be automatically considered for our main scholarships and bursaries when you apply, so there's nothing extra that you need to do.
You may be eligible for the following funding opportunities, depending on your fee status:
Unfortunately no scholarships and bursaries match your selection, but there are more listed on scholarships and bursaries page.
Scheme | Based on | Amount |
---|---|---|
Based on {{item.eligibility_basis}} | Amount {{item.amount}} |
We also have other, more specialised scholarships and bursaries - such as those for students from specific countries.
Browse Lancaster University's scholarships and bursaries.
BSc Finance, 2018
I do think LUMS has a significantly positive effect on my life and my career, and I would definitely recommend LUMS for prospective applicants.
The information on this site relates primarily to 2024/2025 entry to the University and every effort has been taken to ensure the information is correct at the time of publication.
The University will use all reasonable effort to deliver the courses as described, but the University reserves the right to make changes to advertised courses. In exceptional circumstances that are beyond the University’s reasonable control (Force Majeure Events), we may need to amend the programmes and provision advertised. In this event, the University will take reasonable steps to minimise the disruption to your studies. If a course is withdrawn or if there are any fundamental changes to your course, we will give you reasonable notice and you will be entitled to request that you are considered for an alternative course or withdraw your application. You are advised to revisit our website for up-to-date course information before you submit your application.
More information on limits to the University’s liability can be found in our legal information.
We believe in the importance of a strong and productive partnership between our students and staff. In order to ensure your time at Lancaster is a positive experience we have worked with the Students’ Union to articulate this relationship and the standards to which the University and its students aspire. View our Charter and other policies.
Explore what Lancaster University can offer you. From accommodation, study spaces, sports facilities, cafes, restaurants and more, we've got you.
Start your tour