Master of Science in Finance (Banking)

at University of Westminster - Marylebone Campus United Kingdom

Events play an essential role in the business, cultural and sporting life of all countries. In recent years an exciting new profession has emerged with event planners designing and organising a diverse range of events, and marketing the great variety of destinations and venues in which they take place.

This course is specifically designed for people who want to enter or make further progress in, management-level careers in the fast-expanding field of event management. London is an ideal place in which to study events with many venues on the doorstep.

This course explores the strategic development, design and logistical organisation of many different types of event.  You will also learn how events and conferences contribute to enriching the lives of communities and improve communications in business, politics and professional life. The dissertation will give you further opportunity to research a conference or events topic in depth. The course is taught by experienced academics and industry practitioners, providing valuable insight into this exciting industry sector.

The growth in global construction is fuelling the demand for professional quantity surveyors and construction commercial managers who can take a holistic view of construction projects – overseeing costs, contractual and procurement matters – from inception to completion. Our project-based approach to learning exposes you to live and past construction projects from the outset, preparing you to accurately predict and control project costs.

This professionally focused degree will prepare you to confidently and effectively manage the commercial aspects of building and civil engineering projects across the property and construction industries. Whether you’re already working in construction or looking to enter the industry, you can start your journey to becoming a certified quantity surveyor or commercial manager.

Fully accredited by the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS), the Chartered Institute of Building (CIOB) and the Chartered Association of Building Engineers (CABE), it will equip you with the professional and technical skills to ensure projects are delivered on time, to the required quality and within budget. This involves early cost planning, procurement evaluation, tendering, estimating, contractual routes, project cost control and commercial management.

Our central London location and numerous industry contacts, which include Great Portland Estates, Mace, Lendlease, The Portman Estate, Wilmott Dixon, Multiplex, Transport for London and The Crown Estate, enable us to invite practising professionals to give guest lectures and regularly contribute to the course. They provide buildings as case studies for coursework, learning materials (drawings, reports, clients briefs etc.) and come into the University to give face-to-face formative feedback on students’ work. We aim to create authentic learning activities to ensure you are business-ready for employment or can further progress in your existing careers.

Our construction courses share a common ‘Level 4’; the first year of the full-time course or the first two years if studying part-time. Shared core modules allow you to gain knowledge of the different professional roles and the interdisciplinary nature of the modern construction industry. At the end of the Level 4, you’ll be better placed to choose the course-specific modules in later years of study that emphasise the knowledge and skills for your chosen profession. It also means that, should your interests change, you can switch course.

Commercial managers play a key role in the commercial and financial success of construction projects, by monitoring activities to ensure projects are delivered on time, on budget and on quality. Our innovative course delivers the people and project management skills, professional and technical knowledge required to tackle the technical, organisational, commercial, legal and financial issues that can arise.

Fully accredited by the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) and the Chartered Institute of Building (CIOB), this course will be of interest if you are a graduate in or with previous construction-related employment and if you are seeking a senior position in the field of commercial management.

It will develop your awareness of the importance of construction projects to clients, and the context within which projects are procured and undertaken, in particular the economic, financial, corporate, legal and regulatory constraints. You'll gain greater knowledge and understanding of the theories, concepts, principles, techniques, and intellectual and practical skills needed for effective procurement, financial control, risk assessment, supply chain management and more.

Incorporating the latest digital and analytic marketing practices, the broad curriculum of our Master’s degree reflects the rapidly changing global marketing environment. Whilst at Westminster, you can also secure two internationally-recognised professional qualifications – the Institute of Data and Marketing (IDM) Certificate in Digital Marketing and the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising (IPA) Global Foundation Certificate, as well as joining the Chartered Institute of Public Relations (CIPR).

Here at Westminster, we’ve been teaching postgraduate degrees in marketing communications for over 20 years. Our goal is to prepare you for professional life in the increasingly complex and dynamic marketing communications industry, incorporating the growing content of digital marketing and new innovations.

Sound and ethical financial management lies at the heart of every successful business: to generate sufficient income, optimise resources, reduce risk and gain a good return on investments. On this course, you’ll learn to strategically plan, organise, direct and control finances in a rapidly evolving global financial sector.

Our Finance and Business Management degree has been purposefully designed to meet the educational requirements of the Chartered Institute for Securities and Investment (CISI). Although exemptions are not available, our Course will provide you with the necessary set of skills to sit several professional exams.

With an emphasis on learning through practice, it provides a solid foundation of finance theories, systems and procedures, developing your skills for complex modelling and analysis. Gaining a greater appreciation of strategic financial decision-making with a specific focus on ethics and sustainability, you’ll be prepared for a fast track and rewarding career in the international financial services sector or in management.

You will learn to analyse financial markets to forecast financial performance, using real data – live and historic – in our Finance Markets Suite (FMS) with its replica trading floor. You’ll also hear directly from current professionals through guest speakers, field trips to financial institutions and professional training sessions.

Business School graduates have gone on to work for large banks and other financial institutions, including Vanguard, Standard Chartered, Citibank, Société Générale and Paribas, and governmental agencies, such as the World Economic Forum.

Modern organisations increasingly rely on digital technologies, such as the Internet of Things, Big Data, blockchain, cryptocurrencies and data analytics, to improve their business processes and provide increased value to customers. However, integrating these new technologies into existing operations can prove complex and costly – it requires a unique skillset that combines business acumen and digital competence.

Open to graduates from any subject area, this course is ideal for aspiring digital business professionals who want to enhance their skills and career prospects by becoming business oriented, but with sufficient understanding of the latest technology to envisage, plan and manage digital initiatives successfully. It will prepare you to manage digital business challenges and lead at the forefront of digital transformation. 

Interior architecture is a distinct and separate discipline to architecture. Its specific focus is the creation of innovative and exciting interior spaces, primarily through the adaptation and spatial manipulation of existing buildings.

The course is concerned not just with physical intervention but also with how space is understood and occupied. The course implicitly embeds issues of sustainability, through its concern with reuse, and refurbishment, as well as the critical ability to respond appropriately to a given context.

It is interdisciplinary in its outlook and acknowledges the importance of other closely related areas, including interior design, exhibition design, set and lighting design, retail and product design, interior conservation as well as multidisciplinary and traditional design practice.

The Interior Architecture BA course is designed to equip you with the practical skills and theoretical knowledge required to pursue a career in interior architecture and design-related fields and/or go on to further awards in tertiary education, most typically a Master's qualification.

The design modules promote creativity, aesthetic sensibility and intellectual enquiry, together with the skills needed to work individually and in groups in developing design proposals.

The work produced in the design studios forms the basis of your design portfolio through which you will prepare for practice/employment, or in support of your application for postgraduate study. Technical skills, cultural context, design management and economics, and the commercial aspect of interiors necessary for practice are integrated with design projects.

Top reasons to study with us

• State-of-the-art facilities, including designated studio spaces open 7 days a week at our Marylebone Campus, creating a vibrant academic and creative studio culture. Our fully staffed workshops are equipped with CNC, laser-cutting and rapid prototyping equipment.
• Extracurricular projects – you'll have opportunities to work on live projects with real clients, live competitions and exhibitions beyond the classroom. Recent collaborators have included the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Freud Museum London and Battersea Arts Centre.
• Extracurricular workshops – previous workshops have included a steam-bending workshop with Samuli Naamanka Design Finland, a papercrete workshop with Aberrant Architecture, an art depot workshop and a workshop with local schoolchildren working with Disabled Artists Making Dis/Ordinary Space.
• Expert speakers and workshop leaders to help you develop niche, in-demand skills. Previous workshop leaders have included a lighting designer, a production designer, a motion graphics designer and a filmmaker.
• An International outlook – previous opportunities have included a five-day field trip to a European destination for all third years, a semester-long exchange to Australia, China and Oslo for second years, and one-off travel opportunities such as visiting the VOLA factory in Denmark or a design workshop run with students from the Pratt Institute in New York.

This exciting specialist accounting degree is designed specifically to meet the needs of a talent pool for the changing accounting services sector. Education in this subject area is in high demand in a wide variety of sectors and industries where accounting specialists manage budgets, prepare financial and annual reports and also are involved at Board level to inform the development of strategy and guide business decisions. Our degree is the first step to becoming a qualified accounting professional with potential to develop a rewarding career in large and small firms as a consultant or in a business start-up.

This professionally accredited degree offers a rounded business education designed to develop your understanding of accounting theories and practice, together with the business acumen, team-working, problem-solving, communication skills and the commercial awareness needed in a complex global financial world.

Raising your awareness of the global, social and ethical professional environment within which the accounting profession operates, you’ll learn to appreciate accounting issues within the wider business context, able to guide decisions on anything from cost-cutting and outsourcing to operational planning and environmental policy, for example.

Taught by academics with professional experience as accountants and managers, there is an emphasis on learning through practice, so you graduate with the breadth of knowledge and capabilities to respond proactively and creatively to contemporary business issues and challenges. You’ll develop practical skills, receiving hands-on training in specialist accounting software such as Sage, Bloomberg and SPSS. In our state-of-the-art Financial Markets Suite (FMS), you’ll also have access to live and historical financial reports, experiencing the same Bloomberg platform used by leading global investment banks.

Changes in technology and regulation mean that the accounting industry is constantly evolving. On our course, you’ll have the chance to focus your studies from the start, blending a conceptual theoretical framework with practical 'real-world' application as the curriculum progresses from basic to more specialised and advanced applications. Upon completion, you will be part-qualified, eligible to apply up to nine exemptions with ACCA (Association of Chartered Certified Accountants) and up eight exemptions with CIMA (Chartered Institute of Management Accountants).

Our programme will equip you with the required skills and attributes needed for an engaging and successful career in accounting or related fields in the private, public and not-for-profit sectors. It will assist you in developing excellent conceptual knowledge and technical skills in financial accounting, management accounting, corporate finance, taxation, auditing, and financial analysis, as well as the required attributes to excel in the modern global business environment. Past graduates have gone on to a range of accounting and other professional posts in the private and public sectors, including ACCA and Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales (ICAEW) training contracts, and finance posts in the public sector.

The global environmental and energy challenge facing current and future generations of architects and building professionals calls for a deeper understanding of the principles of environmental design, and their effective application into architectural practice worldwide. Over the last decades Environmental Design as a subject area has developed, responding to new research and experimentation, both in academia and in practice. However, buildings claiming to be environmentally conscious do not perform to the expected standards, still heavily contributing to global CO2 emissions and often providing unsatisfactory comfort conditions to occupants. The same can be said for the existing built environment which is largely outdated and underperforming, requiring urgent implementation of effective retrofit strategies not only to improve energy performance, but also comfort, health and wellbeing. This is due to a lack of comprehensive performance prediction and feedback protocols, which are still not common practice in architectural design.

Our highly flexible business degree is designed for those who want to thrive in a rapidly changing global, cultural and technological business world. You’ll develop the versatility, vision and wisdom that future business leaders and managers need.

With an emphasis on learning through practice, you will develop the breadth of knowledge, skills and capabilities to respond proactively and creatively to contemporary business issues and challenges. A large range of optional modules – covering everything from brands and business ethics to entertainment and sport – means you can tailor your studies each year.

You’ll also hear direct from industry practitioners, who will share their own experience of, for example, incorporating the principles of the circular economy in their businesses.

You will be encouraged to adopt an enquiring and critical approach to ideas and issues, developing the graduate attributes that employers value. For example, when learning how to evaluate company performance in sustainability, you will be tasked with investigating the big picture through news and contemporary journals, rather than relying solely on a company’s PR. You’ll also gain hands-on experience of common business computing and software, including Tableau Data Visualisation, FAME and the Microsoft Office suite.

All of this will help develop the necessary confidence and business acumen to set up your own business or contribute proactively to private business, public or ‘third’ sector organisations. Past graduates have found successful employment as management, marketing and advertising trainees, as trainee accountants and brand managers, recruitment consultants, retail managers and as assistants in market research, PR and global brand.