Course overview

Our Accounting and Finance degree offers you the opportunity to graduate with significant exemptions from the main accountancy professional bodies, giving you a head start for your career. At Leeds, you’ll study in one of the largest city regions for financial and business services in England, with a range of opportunities to gain relevant work experience.

Combining accounting and finance theory with professional techniques, this course will give you the practical knowledge and skills that top accounting and finance employers are looking for.

You’ll develop a deep understanding of the way financial information is used and managed within organisations and how it is reported. You’ll learn about the modern economy, the nature of business and the role that accounting and finance can play within it.

This programme offers pathways from Year 2 which will allow students to tailor their course to their specific interests or professional aspirations. The pathways will provide modules that can be taken in particular areas and followed through to their final year. This allows a level of personalisation and self-direction not previously available on this programme, providing students with a degree of flexibility to meet their own needs.

The pathways available on this programme are:

• Economics
• Enterprise and Innovation
• Ethics and Sustainability
• Business Management

Course highlights

• Choose to take an optional year in industry gaining practical experience or spend a year studying in another culture at one of our many partner universities across the world.

• Develop practical skills for your career, with facilities including our state-of-the-art trading room. You'll have the chance to gain certification for taking part in Bloomberg Market Concepts training in your first year, and to participate in a live trading simulation in your final year.

• Learn from highly qualified and experienced professional accountants and world-renowned academic researchers.

• Graduate with the opportunity to receive significant exemptions from the main accountancy professional bodies, giving you a head start for a career as a Chartered Accountant.

Career opportunities

A degree in Accounting and Finance equips you with a range of skills to pursue many career options. You will develop a comprehensive skill set that is highly valued by employers across all sectors.

Whilst a large number of graduates have pursued a career in accountancy and become qualified accountants, there are a variety of other options available to you as a graduate. For example, recent graduates have gone on to work as Retail and Investment Bankers, Management Trainees, Civil Servants, Brokers, Auditors, Finance Analysts, Insolvency Administrators, and Tax and Business Advisors.

Course details

Our degrees have a modular structure. This means that compulsory modules provide you with the core knowledge and skills that you need, while optional and discovery modules allow you to shape your course to suit your personal interests and career aspirations.

Year one

You’ll be introduced to a set of compulsory modules that lay the foundations of your studies. You’ll learn and develop the mathematical knowledge and skills you need and be introduced to key financial and economic principles, as well as the fundamentals of financial and management accounting. You’ll also choose an optional module based on your current level of mathematics and statistics knowledge, and be offered discovery module(s) from a broad range of University-wide disciplines.

Year two

Building upon your knowledge base from first year, you’ll undertake further compulsory modules that will develop your understanding of corporate finance, and financial and management accounting. You’ll also develop essential skills including research methods and analytical techniques. You’ll again have the option to take modules to further your skills in areas of banking, mathematics, economics, as well as more general subjects in business and the legal environment, entrepreneurship, ethics and sustainability. A choice of discovery modules will again be offered.

Final year

When you enter your final year, you will have developed high-level research and analytical skills. You’ll apply these to a project that runs throughout the year, which could be either a research dissertation on a topic of your choice or in-depth financial analysis on a major organisation. You’ll also have the opportunity to explore advanced topics in finance and undertake a complex case study. Optional modules will span diverse topics, such as auditing, taxation, forensic accounting and finance, private equity and international banking and finance. You will also have the option to continue to study topics in economics, business management, ethics and sustainability. A choice of discovery modules will also be offered in your final year.

During your second and final years, you can choose from optional modules that have been tailored to offer additional subject specific pathways. These pathways offer optional modules in Economics, Business Management, Ethics and Sustainability.

Course structure

The list shown below represents typical modules/components studied and may change from time to time. Read more in our terms and conditions.

For more information and a full list of typical modules available on this course, please read Accounting and Finance BSc in the course catalogue

Year 1 compulsory modules

• Foundations of Finance
• Academic and Professional Development for Studies in Finance
• Mathematics and Statistics for Economics and Business 1B
• Introduction to Financial Accounting
• Introduction to Management Accounting
• Economic Theory and Applications for Finance

 
Year 2 compulsory modules

• Corporate Finance
• Financial Econometrics
• Commercial Skills for Finance Professionals
• Intermediate Financial Accounting
• Intermediate Management Accounting

 
Year 3 compulsory modules

• Contemporary Issues in Accounting
• Advanced Finance
• Critical Cases in Accounting and Finance

* Scholarships available for international students.