Banking and Finance (MSc) 2025 entry

For more details, including weekly contact hours, teaching methods and assessment, please see the module catalogue. The modules are examples from previous academic years and may be subject to change before you start your course.

• Compulsory

  • Advanced Corporate Finance: focuses on empirical and theoretical issues that arise in modern corporate finance.
  • Applied Financial Econometrics: develops students' ability to undertake quantitative research by equipping them with econometric tools and techniques to analyse and interpret financial data.
  • Banking and Finance: provides students with an in-depth knowledge and a rigorous background in the mainstream areas of modern banking and finance.
  • Portfolio Management: covers concepts such as valuation, efficient diversification, and predictability of asset returns. The module contains a balance between theoretical models and their practical applications.
  • Financial Data Analysis with Bloomberg: is designed to empower students to navigate the dynamic landscape of finance using Bloomberg as a powerful analytical tool and will balance key finance concepts with practical application.

• Optional

  • Behavioural Finance: introduces students to key concepts in behavioural finance and distinguishes between conventional financial theory and behavioural approaches. Focuses on deviations from rational models, illuminating resulting biases that impact upon financial markets, their institutions, and other participants.
  • Financial Systems: outlines the fundamentals of financial systems, focusing on the influence of technology and innovation along with the challenges that these pose to regulators. This module is required for achieving Chartered Banker Status.
  • International Financial Management: covers the foreign exchange market, international monetary systems, exchange rate determination, currency risk management, and international investment and diversification.
  • Risk Management: provides an insight into managing the exposure to risk and how to apply relevant theories to realistic financial decision problems. This module is required for achieving Chartered Banker Status.
  • Financial Technology (FinTech): equips students with a knowledge of the technology underpinning FinTech by introducing advancements in blockchain, machine learning, and artificial intelligence, and provides an overview of key trends and considers the impact of FinTech on key aspects of Financial Services.
  • Corporate Governance: explores how major corporate control events, such as mergers and acquisitions, leveraged buyouts, asset sales, spinoffs, financial distress, and bankruptcy, (re)shape firms and affect stakeholders.

  Optional modules are subject to change each year and require a minimum number of participants to be offered; some may only allow limited numbers of students.

• Dissertation

  Students attend lectures throughout Semesters 1 and 2 to prepare them for conducting the research portion of the dissertation. The dissertation is normally on a specific area of management, however, at the University of St Andrews Business School, you will have the freedom to develop a topic of your own, which is of interest to you and will contribute towards career development or further study goals.

  Students are assigned a supervisor based on a research proposal submitted in the second semester. They will then research and write a 15,000-word dissertation over the summer to be submitted on a date specified in August.

  If students choose not to complete the dissertation requirement for their Masters degree (MLitt), there are exit awards available that allow suitably qualified candidates to receive a postgraduate diploma (PGDip). By choosing an exit award, you will receive a PGDip instead of a MLitt.