Strong financial management is essential to a prosperous business. By combining management know-how with financial expertise, you’ll be ideally placed to deliver practical business solutions that ensure any organisation fulfils its potential.
By the time you graduate from the BA (Hons) Business Management (Finance), you’ll be taking financial analysis and projections in your stride. You’ll have the specialist skills to assess the financial health of an organisation, control and co-ordinate its financial resources effectively, and help it avoid common pitfalls in performance management. You’ll also have a strong understanding of corporate governance.
We give you plenty of choice in charting your route to a high-flying, high-achieving career. Flexibility is a cornerstone of the BA (Hons) Business Management (Finance) so there is ample scope to focus on the areas that most reflect your interests and career ambitions.
All students take the same core modules in the first year to give them a solid grounding in the key business disciplines. After that, you can choose to follow the specialist pathway in Finance or – if you find your interests have changed – you can easily transfer to one of our other pathways in Marketing, HRM or International Business. Alternatively, you can continue on the core Business Management route, developing a broader, fully rounded skillset while drawing on our extensive list of optional modules.
The BA (Hons) Business Management (Finance) is offered as a four-year degree to include a placement year. You can, however, study on a three-year full-time basis, with opportunities for internships in the summer breaks.
Accreditation
We have developed this course in close consultation with the premier professional body for managers, the Chartered Management Institute (CMI). It is one of the few degrees in the country where you can graduate with the CMI Level 5 Diploma in Management and Leadership alongside your degree.
The Diploma is the benchmark qualification for full CMI membership and takes you a step towards Chartered Manager status, signalling to prospective employers that you’re suited for senior leadership roles and rapid promotion. You won’t need to take extra exams or coursework to achieve the Diploma: our combined module and CMI assessments offer a smooth route to both qualifications.
Throughout the degree, you will become an affiliate member of the CMI, at no extra cost, with access to networking events, online resources and additional benefits to support your career development and enhance your employability.
If you aspire to a career with a financial focus, the course also features an optional (delete these words) modules offering exemptions from the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants (CIMA) papers. It gives you a head start if you would like to qualify as a chartered management accountant eventually.
Professional mentoring
Thanks to the CMI accreditation, we can introduce you to a privileged network of contacts. Ours was the first degree in the country to offer every student the chance to receive support and guidance from an external CMI mentor at each stage of the course.
Your mentor will be a senior business person, either a Chartered Manager or Fellow of the CMI, with a wealth of experience and insights to share with you. From day one, they will advise and coach you from a business perspective, showing how the management and financial theory you are learning can be applied directly to the workplace.
Hands-on learning
You’ll take the theories off the page and put them into practice in real-world scenarios. You can test your ideas through business simulations, topical case studies and employer-led projects. A live consultancy project, where you help an employer to improve business performance, will build your financial analysis, research, project management, problem-solving and decision-making skills.
We encourage and support you to take an optional placement year or summer internship. You could also benefit from fieldtrips to see business in close-up: one recent example was to the Sony UK Technology Centre, the company’s manufacturing and customer service base in Wales.
Facilities and resources
To bring your financial studies into sharp focus, we’re one of the few universities in the UK offering direct use of Bloomberg data, information and analytics. Our Bloomberg Financial Markets Lab is a dedicated trading room providing a simulation of what it’s like to work on a real trading floor in the financial district. You’ll get to grips with the same information and technology used by financial professionals across the world, ensuring you can make a contribution from day one in your career.
Global thinking
Your learning will be enriched by international perspectives. Ours is a global student community and the BA (Hons) Business Management (Finance) not only attracts students from all over the world to Derby but is also delivered for our educational partners across Europe and Asia. It means there is a lot of potential for inter-country debates, seminars and guest lectures delivered online, international case studies and joint projects.
In your second year, you’ll have the option to spend an exchange week in Barcelona studying at the EU Business School, one of our academic partners which runs the same degree and where teaching is in English. You could also take advantage of other optional visits overseas: a trip to Copenhagen saw our students investigating issues such as art fraud.
Expert teaching
You’ll be taught by an experienced and highly qualified team with an impressive track record for research and a national reputation for excellence. They have received recognition in the CMI Higher Education Awards, including runners-up places for the Outstanding Innovation and Delivery Award and the International Award in 2018.
The team has extensive contacts in the business and professional community regionally, nationally and internationally – and you can draw on those connections for inspiration and insight.
Our ‘scaffolded’ approach to learning provides a smooth transition so that you can ease your way into both university-level study and business management practice. It means that you’ll have full support in the early stages of the degree but will gradually move towards greater independence as your knowledge deepens and you start to immerse yourself in the wider business community. By stage three, you will be able to take greater charge of your own learning, with module tutors advising and directing your studies.
Thanks to your contact with personal tutors, engagement with CMI mentors and participation in University events, you’ll become more attuned to professional behaviour and build your skills in critical thinking, creativity and self-reliance.
Another of our priorities is to foster a new generation of responsible business leaders with a strong moral compass. Throughout the course, you will therefore look at the role of business in wider society, exploring issues ranging from environmental sustainability to child labour, ethical governance to responsible innovation.
You’ll learn through different methods including:
- formal lectures, sometimes involving guest speakers
- tutor-led and student-led seminars
- one-to-one and small group tutorials
- work experience projects
- work-related learning
- self-directed study
- optional placement and internship opportunities
- video discussions with overseas partner institutions
How you are assessed
Assessment is mainly via coursework which can take forms such as:
- traditional essays and reports
- group project work
- research and consultancy projects
- presentations
- posters
- design of digital materials
- in-class tests
- computer-based assessments
Personal academic tutoring
Your personal academic tutor will work with you to help you get the most out of your time at university. Having someone to talk to about your academic progress, your university experience and your professional aspirations is hugely valuable. We want you to feel challenged in your studies, stretched but confident to achieve your academic and professional goals.
Find out more about personal academic tutoring
September 2020 typical entry requirements
| Requirement | What we're looking for | | UCAS points | 120 (up to 16 from AS-levels) |
| Specific requirements at A-level | No specific subject requirements |
| Specific requirements at GCSE | GCSE Maths and English Grade C/Grade 4 (or above) or equivalent qualification |
| IELTS | 6.0 (with 5.5 in each skills area) |
| Interview / Audition | N/A |
| Portfolio | N/A |
Alternative entry qualifications:
- BTEC - DDM
- Access to HE Diploma - 60 credits: 45 at level 3 with a minimum of Dist: 15 Merit: 24 Pass: 6
We usually consider an A-level in General Studies as a supplementary qualification. A good application/performance will be taken into account if you do not meet the criteria/offer conditions.
Our entry requirements for this course should be read together with the University's general entry requirements, which details subjects we accept, alternative qualifications and what we're looking for at Derby.
Your qualifications will equip you for a rewarding leadership career in any area of business and management, but especially in the field of finance. They will also mark you out as having the potential for rapid promotion to senior positions, someone who can work competently and ethically in global and cross-cultural environments.
Our former students now work in a wide range of companies, including banks such as HSBC and Barclays and chartered accountancy firms such as Shapcotts. Some use the skills and entrepreneurial spirit they develop during their degree to set up their own businesses.
Our Careers and Employment Service will provide you with support from day one of your course to ensure you leave Derby as a ‘work-ready’ graduate – industry aware, motivated and enterprising. Throughout your studies, you’ll also benefit from our Personal Development Planning (PDP) scheme which enables you to reflect on your learning and develop your career ambitions.
The support continues once you’ve completed your course too: you are entitled to further help and guidance from the Careers and Employment Service for up to three years after leaving the University.
Further study
You can choose to continue your studies at Derby with one of our far-reaching masters programmes, including the MSc Accounting and Finance and the MBA Global Finance. You may be entitled to an alumni discount on your fees if you decide to extend your time with us by progressing from undergraduate to postgraduate study.
4 with optional placement year
Download programme specification
Teaching hours
Like most universities, we operate extended teaching hours at the University of Derby, so contact time with your lecturers and tutors could be anytime between 9am and 9pm. Your timetable will usually be available on the website 24 hours after enrolment on to your course.
Please note: Our courses are refreshed and updated on a regular basis. If you are thinking about transferring onto this course (into the second year for example), you should contact the programme leader for the relevant course information as modules may vary from those shown on this page.
