MSc Finance and Investment

How do portfolio managers diversify, manage their exposure to risk and accurately value their assets? How do psychological factors affect the financial behaviours of investors and finance practitioners? Our professionally recognised MSc Finance and Investment builds on your existing knowledge of finance, economics or business to prepare you for a challenging and rewarding career in portfolio management and corporate finance.

You’ll explore how corporations deal with funding sources, capital structuring and investment decisions. You’ll investigate behavioural finance, financial planning strategies and fixed income markets and instruments. You develop knowledge and skills in: portfolio theory fixed-income securities behavioural finance corporate finance Our aim is to give you the best foundation for a career in investment or elsewhere in the finance sector. We want to help you understand the theory and put it into practice. You’ll learn to use our Bloomberg Financial Markets Lab, which gives you access to the data and analytical tools found in financial institutions across the City of London and throughout the world. This will allow you to develop the skills needed in industry and gain an advantage in the graduate recruitment market. The University of Essex is a member of the CFA® Institute University Affiliation Program and our MSc Finance and Investment covers more than 70% of the Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) Program Candidate Body of Knowledge.

Upon completing this course, you are well positioned to sit for the CFA exams, which are among the most widely recognised and established qualifications in the UK. This course is taught at Essex Business School. Our expert team are at the forefront of financial debate and have presented their research at the Bank of England, the European Central Bank and the Federal Reserve. By embedding the latest academic and industry thinking into our teaching, you experience an education that’s at the forefront of the issues impacting today’s finance and investment sectors.

Essex has one of the largest groups of finance academics in the UK, providing a wide range of courses in banking, finance, investment, risk management and financial econometrics. This means you’ll also be able to choose from a huge range of optional modules to tailor your course to your interests and aspirations.