Programme Specification: Msc Risk and Finance

Programme Specification: MSc Risk and Finance

1. Awarding Body / LSE
2. Details of accreditation by a professional/statutory body
eg ESRC; BPS etc) / N/A
3. Name of final award / MSc
4. Programme Title / Risk and Finance
5. Duration of the Course / Full-time 12 months
6. Based in the Department/Institute: / Department of Finance
7. Relevant QAA subject benchmark statements / N/A
8. UCAS Code/application code / N4U3
9. First written/Last amended / Oct 2007 / Nov 2012

10.  The programme aims to:

offer the following benefits:
·  The opportunity to study in one of the most highly-rated Departments in the subject area in the world, both for its research and its institutional links.
·  Research-led teaching by internationally renowned faculty from several departments and with practitioners expert in the area.
·  Exposure to different approaches to risk, its management and regulation.
·  Expert practitioner-led seminars for a more applied approach
·  An opportunity for students with prior training in diverse disciplines and with a range of professional backgrounds to acquire a broad knowledge of risk management and regulation, and to deepen their competency in a chosen area of specialisation.
·  An opportunity to apply for an optional internship at a leading institution to gain hands-on risk management experience.
·  Preparation for a variety of challenging career opportunities in a wide range of countries, including: consulting, finance and banking, insurance, management, regulation and supervision, public administration.
11. Programme outcomes: knowledge and understanding; skills and other attributes
Knowledge and understanding:
At the end of the programme, students will have a comprehensive view of risk perception in organisations and of how the success of organisations depends on their ability to operate in the face of risk. They will have gained knowledge and understanding of the important recent advances that have been made towards developing quantitative tools that complement the traditional techniques of ‘insurance’ risk measurement and that can be applied to financial markets and environmental risk. At the same time they will have gained knowledge and understanding of the important insights being revealed by other social science disciplines into how more complex risks are perceived, and how social organisations can adjust to regulate and share them.
Subject specific skills:
Risk management is now recognised as requiring special skills that are central to the functioning of the organisation. At the end of the programme, and to the appropriate extent indicated by their level of award, students should demonstrate:
·  appropriate understanding of and ability to apply tools of risk measurement;
·  appropriate ability to communicate the ways that risk can be perceived and can impact decision making in organizations;
·  appropriate ability to communicate knowledge and understanding of techniques of risk shifting in markets, firms and societies and of the tools available to managers and regulators for controlling risks, and ability to recognize and explain the limitations of these techniques;
·  appropriate ability to communicate knowledge and understanding of how the organisation of enterprises, governments or markets may increase or decrease risk, based on a critical evaluation of related theoretical and conceptual frameworks and relevant empirical evidence.
Cognitive abilities and non-subject specific skills: At the end of the programme, students should be able to demonstrate:
·  appropriate ability to evaluate arguments and evidence critically;
·  appropriate ability to locate, extract, analyse, and draw reasoned conclusions from multiple sources—including electronic sources—of appropriate literature and relevant data;
·  appropriate ability to acknowledge and reference sources;
·  appropriate capacities for independent and self-managed learning;
·  appropriate use of communications and information technology, such as spreadsheets, word-processing and on-line databases;
·  appropriate communication skills such as ability to present quantitative and qualitative information, together with analysis, argument and commentary, in an appropriate form;
·  ability to work in groups and other appropriate inter-personal skills, including oral and written presentation skills.
Information relating to careers can be accessed here
12. Teaching, learning and assessment strategies to enable outcomes to be achieved and demonstrated
Teaching and learning strategies:
This programme provides both research-led and practice-based teaching which aims to deliver an integrated knowledge of risk management and regulation across a range of substantive domains. It brings together a unique and innovative collaboration between Accounting and Finance and four other departments: Geography and Environment, Law, Operational Research and Sociology; together with practitioner-led seminars, primarily through staff at Deutsche Bank. It also offers an opportunity for students to be considered for a summer internship at Deutsche Bank.
Students acquire their detailed knowledge and understanding of the course, and their subject specific skills, through a combination of lectures, seminars, problem classes and progression to guided independent study, reinforced by the opportunity to meet teachers and their supervisors one-to-one in office hours.
Course reading lists include not only leading textbooks but references to current research literature and primary sources, including relevant examples from current practice, official and professional policy documents, websites and other electronic data sources.
The compulsory dissertation (equivalent to a half-unit) is of not more than 10,000 words on a topic agreed with the course director and is due to be submitted at the beginning of September. The dissertation is carried out under the supervision of an LSE faculty member who may or may not be an
instructor in the core course of the programme. Dissertation supervision is structured according to a schedule of three meetings (subject definition, progress review and reading of preliminary draft).
Academic teaching staff are leading-edge researchers who give students an insight into current thinking and recent developments in their fields. Several teachers are also involved in policy advice and formation and give students insights into real-world developments in finance, economics and econometrics and the forces that shape them.
Professionals working in the field contribute to the practitioner-led seminar.
Students have the opportunity to acquire hands-on experience of IT as well as familiarity with
electronic data sources and databases.
The programme also offers students an opportunity to apply for an internship at Deutsche Bank to gain hands-on risk management experience.
Assessment strategies:
Summative assessment of knowledge and understanding and of subject-specific skills is primarily by 3hr unseen examinations at the end of each year. For the core course, assessment is by examination (50%) and dissertation (50%). For some of the options coursework project assessment amounts to 20%-30% of the final course grade.
Formative assessment is through class assignments, including numerical and computer-based exercises, critical essays and commentaries, and individual and group presentations, for example on case studies and mini-projects.
Cognitive and non-subject specific skills are developed in parallel with the development of—and through the same teaching and assessment structures that are designed to achieve the appropriate levels of—the knowledge and understanding and subject specific skills described above.
13.  Programme structures and requirements, levels, modules and awards.
See MSc Risk and Finance for more information.

Additional Information

14.  Criteria for admission to the programme
·  Entrants should have a first degree of at least upper second standard from a UK university, or its equivalent.
·  Applicants are assumed to have some knowledge of mathematics and statistics. Interesting applicants with weak backgrounds in this regard will be required to take an LSE Summer School course.
·  For students who do not hold a UK university degree, a GMAT score of 650 is generally required (or, exceptionally, a GRE score of 700 will be considered). Graduates from a UK university may also be asked to take a GRE or GMAT test. (See the introductory section in the LSE Graduate Prospectus on GMAT/GRE.)
·  Non-English speakers also have to meet the School’s standard requirement for English language for all graduate programmes - IELTS 6.5, TOEFL 603 in the paper test, 250 in the computer based test.
15.  Indicators of quality
·  RAE rating (2008): Business and Management Studies: 70% of research outputs graded at 3* or 4* and ranked in top 5 UK HEIs.
·  Finance Faculty lead and are associated with major ESRC funded research centre, the Financial Markets Group (FMG)
·  The last TLAC review of the Department of Finance was in March 2009
·  The LSE Careers Centre website provides data on career destinations of LSE graduates
16.  Methods for evaluating and improving the quality and standard of teaching and learning
School mechanisms (*operate at departmental level):
·  regular staff appraisal*;
·  induction and mentoring* system;
·  student satisfaction survey by TQARO;
·  external examiner check-up system by TLAC;
·  review of all new courses and programmes, and major modifications, by GSSC;
·  full departmental TLAC review every 5 years.
The Department’s additional quality evaluation procedures are coordinated through its Teaching Quality Enhancement Panel. Primary responsibility lies with individual course leaders, course lecturers, class teachers, and supervisors and their own self-evaluation is focussed primarily through the Department’s annual course reviews and peer-teaching observations, the TQARO student questionnaires and the School’s mentoring and staff appraisal processes. Other Departmental structures and processes include:
·  the annual Examination Sub-Board meeting constituted for this degree and the appointed External Examiner’s reports;
·  the termly Departmental meeting;
·  the responsibilities of the Programme Director and the programme steering committee, student feedback and consultation through the MSc staff-student liaison committee (SSLC) constituted for this degree;
·  ad hoc reviews.

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